Serious question: if somebody knows that a job like this is such a ripoff (even if the rates aren't advertised, you _will_ find out soon enough, if via stories like this), why would somebody take a job like this?
The reason people take jobs like this is that they don't have other options, often for a variety of reasons. I know that a lot of the people I talk to need the flexible hours due to family obligations. For some these types of jobs are supplemental- they aren't the primary source of income, but provide a bit extra when money is tight.
For some people though there just aren't a lot of jobs available that match their education and experience.
People that are desperate for money are frequently exploited. Whether it's through wage theft, or unsafe employment practices, or simply demeaning behavior.
Not everyone is a software developer with companies fighting over them. Some really don't have options, and the choice is either get no income and be unable to pay your bills, or get screwed over but get some money to pay the bills.
It's important to keep in mind that a low unemployment rate does not say anything about the overall quality of jobs in the market.
So while it's a 'strong market' in the sense that 'unemployment is low', it could also be examined from another angle. Which is the rise of the gig economy giving people a lot of opportunities for work, but work that comes at a cost of being heavily exploited like with Instacart. Nor does it say anything about whether or not people are holding full time vs part time jobs or the stagnant wage issues.
yes. "unemployment is low" is a measure of the job market. we can say it's "strong" by that measure. but, as you say, when we look at the actual jobs there's a helluva lot of retail and other low wage, limited benefit positions, positions whose salaries have lagged far behind the skyrocketing costs of health care and higher education.
Because they need to. We're talking about unskilled work. You take what you can get. Such companies know there are unskilled workers that will put up with it and take advantage of that.
All of the waiters/cooks/waitresses at a low-quality diner I frequent regularly have felonies for robbery or drugs. Ever since I've been going there I would say the vast majority of new hires have been people who couldn't get a job in other places because of their felony records and lack of education.
When you have a felony a lot of higher-paying unskilled jobs will simply filter you out as being too high risk or likely to cause trouble. So the only places that will hire these kinds of people can get away with crazy tactics like the ones people are discussing in these threads. When your choice is exploitative tactics or literally no other option because the entire market has you blacklisted you are going to take the horrible option knowing full well it is a horrible option.
Is this common? When I tip it's always with the intent of helping the individual, never the company. The much larger original bill is their share, in case they've forgotten.
Are cash tips an effective method of keeping grubby corporate hands out of it?
IHOP will adjust wages based on tips, they try to equal it out to minimum wage. My wife lasted about 3 weeks there. It was also by far the hardest I've ever seen her work, and for context we met in the Army.
I think I finally understand why my former very blue-collar coworkers would never leave a tip when we went out for lunch. I guess they had better information on the local businesses.
A lot of places' wait staff can make fairly decent money. They will usually make below minimum wage, but they often come out way ahead. So at some level, most businesses where you're expected to tip are using tips to subsidize wages. But there are some who take it to the next level, like IHOP or Instacart.
My mom was a waitress most of my life and made decent money, so I always tip 20-25% and a minimum of $5 unless I get extra shitty service. Depending on where you and your coworkers ate at, I would say they were just cheap asses.
No, that’s just rude (given that the tipping culture still exists). If they really wanted to show solidarity they’d leave cash tips, which their server could then forget to report.
I wonder how well using cash tips could solve the problem. I know there are restaurants where servers are required to turn in any cash tips. If a server "forgets to report" and always has far less tips than his/her co-workers, I imagine that he/she would simply be replaced for someone else that does earn tips to report. The employer could say the lack of tips is indicative of poor performance, too.
Most resturants ask you to claim your tips when cashing out, but most just fudge it. They arent going to go through the waiters pockets, as tips are their money and disclosed only to the government. It gets tricky because they try to be the middleman. Just tip cash.
In many states you only have to pay the difference between the "tipped minimum wage" and the actual minimum wage if the employee didn't make enough tips to cover the difference.
Of course it's illegal to steal tips, but actually enforcing that is another matter. Companies will blatantly build illegal business models. And of course some developer coded this automated tip stealing.
This is why I support unions... when you have strength in numbers, you can have an ethical code that can be followed.
Firing one guy because he won't steal from your customers won't fly if the union tells your entire development team to walk and they'll cover wages until they get a better job.
Might fit under fraud. I hope it does. When I first learned of this tactic, I felt tricked. I assumed with a tip, that I was boosting someone’s salary for a job well done. I’m sure it’s debatable, and that my assumption was wrong? But I imagine most people feel this what a tip is.
Fraud
n. the intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive another of his/her/its money, property or a legal right.
It's absolutely defrauding the customer, in addition to whatever laws there might be specifically about wages. They're asking you for money with a description of what the money is for that is between misleading and an outright lie. That's fraud.
I thought that was simply how tipping worked. Wage+tips have to average (at least) minimum wage.
It's obviously a terrible system, but is this different from how most everywhere with tipping in the US works? I've never worked a tipped job in the US.
Many, many decades ago when I worked in a restaurant, the rule was tipped employees needed to be paid at least 50% of the standard minimum wage. At the end of the day, if the employee didn't clear the minimum wage rate with the total of their wage + tips, the employer was required to fork over the additional amount to equal the minimum wage.
However, the absolute bare minimum the employer was allowed to pay was 50% of minimum wage. Not sure if this was just state-specific or if it changed.
Instacart started out by secretly marking up groceries. Once that game was played out, it seems they started secretly marking down employee (oh sorry, contractor) wages
Frankly I can't fathom how this company is still in business. I live in the bay area and I don't know a single person who's ever used it or mentions it.
I've not really understood the point of grocery delivery other than in cities where car ownership is uncommon. And even there, you can rent a Zipcar once a quarter to stock up on bulky or heavy items (toiler paper, bags of rice or flour etc.) That's what I did when I was a car-less student. For other groceries, especially produce, I prefer to pick stuff out myself. And going to the store myself often exposes me to new products that I would not otherwise have learned about.
Well in Atlanta for example, it's either Instacart or Prime Now, and Prime Now from Whole Foods is about the worst grocery delivery service possible. Mostly because you maybe get half of what you ordered.
There's a related blog post up on Medium by this same group (Working Washington) where they placed the same order, once with tip and once without, so people could directly compare.
From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I'm a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I'm going to be tipping in cash.
This isn't wage theft since they are independent contractors. It's more like a company stiffing a supplier. More of a civil than criminal matter. Of course, these folks wouldn't have the resources to sue anyway, even if they weren't bound by binding arbitration.
I think the question though is _why_ is that?
If I steal $950 from someone then it's criminal, but if I refuse to pay them what I agreed then it's civil. It's an odd discrepancy IMO.
Well, if you steal it, it's criminal, but that's simply because that's the definition of theft.
Taking stuff away from people, though, is not necessarily theft, and also not necessarily criminal. If you accidentally take someone else's property because you confused it with your own, for example, that's not criminal, but the other party still has a civil claim against you (namely, to be given back their property).
On the other hand, if you intentionally mislead someone into providing you with some service or product, promising to pay them for it, even though you never intended to pay, that constitutes fraud and is very much criminal.
Generally, it's criminal if it's in the interest of the public and civil if it is primarily in the interest of some party. Not paying some debt because you actually have doubts that you have to pay, or due to an honest mistake is not really something that affects anyone else. Someone intentionally causing situatons where others can't rely on them fulfilling their legal oblications can erode trust in a society, therefore it is in the public interest to prevent that. The boundaries can be fuzzy, but wage theft can very much be criminal.
> This isn't wage theft since they are independent contractors. It's more like a company stiffing a supplier.
Why do you keep saying things to this affect?
A company stiffing a supplier is going to rapidly find themselves without suppliers, or the supplier can afford to / accounts for being stiffed on some orders.
An independent contractor who works for one, or maybe two very similar types of, company is very much like an employee in every way that matters to that individual “independent” contractor, and literally nothing like a B2B supplier.
Additionally, you seem preoccupied with existing legislation as though it has some higher virtue, whereas in reality the law can be, and frequently is, unjust and absurd.
That's not necessarily true. Folks in the gig economy are often classed as "independent contractors" and thus are not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, including minimum wage laws. They also are not entitled to, nor almost ever receive, reimbursements for work expenses. When you are talking about using your own vehicle and paying for depreciation, mechanical work, and gas, this is considerable. It often winds up being an implicit loan against one's own vehicle.
I'd be surprised if calling something a "tip" makes it legally obligated to go to a contractor. I'm sure their lawyers are very aware of the law on this. As someone else said, there is almost certainly a binding arbitration clause. This removes the possibility of individual or class-action lawsuits.
edit: The abuse of the term "independent contractor" is just one of many examples of how labor law enforcement has become lax in the last several decades. How many people on this site aren't in management and work unpaid overtime?
That's a shame. I wonder if customers have any recourse? I'd feel absolutely defrauded if I found out a tip I made through a service like this was (effectively) going to the operator rather than the person who the app represented it as going to.
I don't think "oh the tip went to the contractor we just lowered their wages by the same amount" sounds convincing in a court room.
I wouldn't be so sure about their lawyers being "very aware" of the law. If they were, they wouldn't have called it a "tip" in the first place, as "tip" has a specific legal meaning in most states and in the US tax code.
In fact, I would hesitate to say that the lawyers for most startups have any clue what they're doing, as most seem to be in it to play startup lawyer rather than provide necessary legal advice to their client/employer.
Neither major party is at all interested in doing this, only some on the left wing of the Democrats. Labor reform is opposed in unison from the entire business community, so it is extraordinarily difficult in our political system.
> There is almost certainly a binding arbitration clause. This removes the possibility of individual or class-action lawsuits.
But it does not remove the ability of the court to overrule the clause itself. So someone could still sue Instacart knowing that it will be thrown out if the court decides to enforce the clause.
In my life experience, these things are almost always up in the air until a judge says otherwise.
Getting to the contractor thing, the most workers can really do is file IRS Form SS-8 and see if the IRS will release them of some of their tax obligations. Other than that, there's really not that much enforcement.
Source: I was a misclassified contractor in 2017 while working in WA state. IRS forgave some of my tax burden, but Labor/Industries and Employment Security are absolutely useless if you don't have a literal Form W2 to use.
>But it does not remove the ability of the court to overrule the clause itself. So someone could still sue Instacart knowing that it will be thrown out if the court decides to enforce the clause.
Which they will. There's been a few recent cases that have made mandatory arbitration clauses more-or-less bulletproof.
This is absolutely illegal. They are defrauding customers. No one would voluntarily add money to an order if it was labeled as "donation to Instacart" instead of "tip". They are deceiving customers to get money from them.
This really probably doesn't add up to fraud. There's a difference between being scummy and crime. This should be illegal of course, but it really probably isn't. Restaurants illegally take tips from their employees all the time, which would be a fraud against customers in the same way as this case. However, they don't get into trouble for fraud against customers, but wage theft. That of course doesn't apply to Instacart.
Gig workers are employees, I do not understand how they get away with the outright lie that they are contractors. In Australia we have laws to ensure this does not occur and they were enforced until rideshare and delivery companies showed up.
The Fair Labor Standards Act disallows this type of agreement for ordinarily-tipped jobs.
I don't know how the contractor status of Instacart drivers affects this. They're not technically employees. But the verbiage of "Tip" in the UI is a strong signal to the customer that the money is directly credited to the driver. It should bear no relation to their fee from Instacart.
This is wage theft. A horrible agreement doesn't make it right, even if it is legal.
Maybe so, but WA State Labor and Industries is not quite so "generous" to the gig economy, including their test for contractors, which is a bit more ... "rigorous" ... than some startups would like:
Does the independent contractor bring more than their personal labor?
Do they hire crew of their own or are they bringing other employees?
Or, are they bringing heavy or costly specialized equipment?
Are they an established business, working without your direction or control?
Are they free from your supervision, direction or control?
Is the individual’s business different and separate from your own?
Is the individual’s service “outside the usual course of business,” or in other words, does the
contractor do something different from what you do?
Is the individual’s service being performed “outside of all of the places of business,” or in other
words, does the contractor perform the service away from where you perform your services?
Is the individual contractually obligated to pay costs affiliated with the location from where the work
is controlled (usually its headquarters)?
Does the individual have an established independent business that existed before you brought
them on – OR – does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an
IRS business deduction?
Do you have evidence to demonstrate that the individual has an established business?
Does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an IRS business deduction?
Do you have evidence to demonstrate it?
Is the individual responsible for filing a schedule of expenses with the IRS, such as would be part of a
business tax return?
Does the individual have all required registrations and licenses for their business?
Does the individual maintain his/her own set of books and records that reflect all income and expenses of
the business?
This question is for construction contractors only: Is the individual a properly registered contractor?
"I subcontracted some work to a guy who has a contractor’s registration with L&I. Doesn’t that mean he’s not my employee?"
Not necessarily. L&I auditors look at “direction or control” and other factors described on the previous pages. Because he is a construction contractor, all seven parts of RCW 51.08.181 must be met.
The google term you want is "tip credit" -- it is common and legal federally and in most states to deduct tips from your hourly wage. Washington state is one of the few where tip credits are not legal.
This is a very common setup in other pay structures as well, such as commissioned sales where you are paid a "draw" (such as minimum wage) and you don't paid get any commission until your commissions exceed minimum wage.
What's more, the tip money did go directly to the driver; Instacart just decided to pay less.
It's a pretty inhumane thing to do but on the face of it I don't see how it's wage theft. Welcome to the gig economy.
Not sure why this is being downvoted, as you absolutely are not wrong about this. They are independent contractors who entered into a contract just like a restaurant could contract with a food supplier. They aren't employees in the least as far as the law is concerned.
I'm not defending Instacart, I'm just pointing out legal realities. Many folks in this thread are severely mistaken about employment law. Just because something is morally wrong doesn't mean its illegal. I'm from Washington as well. I know a decent amount about employment law here.
I had a service industry job in texas that payed me around 2.50 an hour (iirc) and as long as I made enough in tips to cover minimum wage they didn't have to pay actual minimum wage.
It's immoral as fuck to steal tips. I don't care if it's legal. If I'm a customer tipping the person a certain amount I want to make sure it's actually helping that person and not just lining the pockets of their employer, that's absurd.
That might be legal in Texas, but in Washington it's explicitly illegal. In the state, tips are completely irrelevant to base pay, all employees must get paid at least minimum wage as base pay.
Instacart is going to get fucked very quickly by the Washington AG. This is as bad as Walmart not paying employees for overtime.
Especially because Washington's Attorney General is particularly fond of jumping on cases like this, particularly worker rights. But he is also fond of keeping startups in line. So this is a double-whammy case for him.
This always seemed crazy to me. Basically the employer pays only a pittance and then stops paying until your tips exceed minimum wage. They're basically stealing the tips between $2.50 and whatever the minimum wage is in your area.
tipping encoded in to law in general seems crazy to me. many (most?) other countries don't have this ritual, and seem to do just fine. I've dined out in many other countries outside the US, and service is generally good regardless of whether tipping is involved/expected or not. And in the US, I don't feel my normal service is all that much better because someone is thinking I might tip an extra dollar or two on an $8 lunch.
I even feel it's the other way around, in other countries the tip is usually the change, like $8 meal, just leave a $10 bill and leave, staff is either happy or neutral, in the US if you don't leave enough you get nasty looks as you exit even if the service was unremarkable.
It will not matter. Washington state law does not apply. The sovereign state of Washington laws are superseded and invalidated by mandatory binding arbitration. The rights set out in the State of Washington's constitution do not apply, for they are superceded and ignored by mandatory binding arbitration.
> The sovereign state of Washington laws are superseded and invalidated by mandatory binding arbitration.
No, they aren't; binding arbitration is a venue for resolving disputes about the application of laws, it doesn't supersede the laws, and manifest disregard for the law is one of the few reasons for courts setting aside a binding arbitration decision.
Washington state law certainly does apply. The state did not sign a mandatory binding arbitration agreement. The employee/contractor may not have the right to bring suit against Instacart, but the state maintains that right.
Thought experiment: could Instacart assault, kidnap, or murder a delivery driver and claim that arbitration is the only venue for redress?
And even then, the worker does have the right to petition the court to review the clause itself. So the worker can still sue with the knowledge that it will be thrown out if the judge decides to uphold the arbitration clause.
Washington state law is very clear that Labor laws cannot be superceded by arbitration clauses, and that employees, including contractors, cannot waive their labor rights.
This 'sovereign state' is the same state that uses a (regressive) sales tax to generate revenue, rather than an income tax. Maybe it'll grow up and be an adult state one day.
And while it is not as important an issue, I, as a tipper, feel that I have been defrauded when this happens (now that I am aware that this does happen, I assume that it has probably been done with some tips I have made.) To be clear: this is not an alternative way of looking at the issue, it is an additional indictment stemming from the practice.
Switch to cash tipping. Tipping through CC or some other mechanism means at least one other party is involved and takes a cut. Cash tipping ensures the money at least is seen by the service staff.
Statistically speaking, the main party missing out on its cut when you tip in cash is the IRS. Not really an ethical concern for most of us, but for those who do feel bad about this, you could just overpay your taxes every year by say 10% of what you estimate you tipped in cash.
It is the obligation of the tipped employee to report their tips as income and pay taxes on them. True, it's difficult to audit so sometimes they don't, but that's hardly my problem.
The notion that you should overpay your own taxes to solve this is just bewildering.
The worker is supposed to report all cash tips. Since most of these workers probably pay little to no taxes, it really doesn’t harm the treasury, even if they fail to report.
Recipients of cash tips must report the income to the IRS for taxation purposes. The fact that many people choose to refuse to disclose their cash tip earnings doesn't mean that I should bulk up my taxes to make up for their fraud.
Companies must now report credit card transactions to the IRS. It's possible for them to see % of cash vs credit and the amount topped in credit. It would not be hard for them to audit you, the worker, if you report lower cash tips than the average than your boss reports in his business.
I’m pretty comfortable tipping via credit card because I understand that the card company and a bank is taking a cut. I am _not_ comfortable with something like this, where it’s not immediately clear what’s happening.
Anecdotally, I've been told by a lot of former restaurant workers that management generally walks off with most or all of the credit card tips. I generally tip in cash everywhere as a result.
> I, as a tipper, feel that I have been defrauded when this happens
It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective.
I'm more upset about this line from Instacart:
> We include tips in the calculation [of pay for deliveries] so that you can get a more accurate picture of what your earnings will be after completing a batch.
This is incredibly dishonest. They're arguing with a straight face that they're doing you a favor by smoothing your earnings from an unpredictable (for example) $8-$50 per hour down to a more reliable $8-$9 per hour.
This is actually the same argument the US government advances in favor of its sugar tariff. Sure, it raises the price of sugar by 200% on average, but it protects us from the awful unpredictability of the world sugar price.
Tip pooling/sharing is different in a few significant ways, though.
First, restaurant staff always know ahead of time if they have to share tips.
And their hourly compensation, as ridiculously low as it may be, is never adjusted to compensate for higher than normal tips.
And, finally, in most restaurants the tip pool is also split up with bussers, bartenders, and hosts who don't always make tips of their own, but still contribute to the overall experience.
I agree that the first two points are significant, but I don't think they're particularly relevant to the viewpoint "as a tipper, I feel I'm being defrauded when this happens".
The third point is also correct, but in that case I think it supports the idea that the tipper is being defrauded when it happens.
I feel like you maybe need to write a book about why you think a server sharing their tips around is equivalent to a corporation reducing wages based on tips.
I don't see how any shorter treatment would be a sufficient explanation.
I mean, imagine the scenario where the server just buys a line cook a drink to say thank you. Fraud!
> I mean, imagine the scenario where the server just buys a line cook a drink to say thank you. Fraud!
That would be a case of the server getting the money and deciding to buy something for the cook.
Whereas in an actual tip-sharing restaurant, the server gets his share of the tip pool after the cook's share has already been taken out. He doesn't get a choice in the matter.
This is generally not what the people giving the tips have in mind.
I'm just one data point, but I imagine I'm not alone:
If I tip someone well, it's because they've been incredibly attentive, kind, accommodating, etc. As much as possible, I want the tip to brighten their day. The effect is greatly diminished if that money is immediately divvied up amongst the other servers, making the difference to what they bring home negligible.
I've never worked as a server (though I did work at Chik-fil-A in highschool; employees are not allowed to accept tips there), and I did not realize that many restaurants are involved in the handling of tip money, rather than the tips going directly to the respective server.
So, no, that's not what I had in mind.
Why should anyone expect that sort of handling of tips? Not everyone has worked a job involving tips. I didn't. Should I have spontaneously asked one of my server friends "hey, btw, how are tips handled at your job? Like, I suspect that when I tip someone, you know, that money goes to them, because after all, I gave it to that person and not the restaurant and not anyone else, but just in case I'm mistaken, could you tell me what happens with the tip money after I leave it on the table? It's a question that's been gnawing at the back of my mind, and I just had to ask!"
My point being: unless you're a server at one of those restaurants, how would you know that your server doesn't get the tip you left for them? Could you substantiate such a claim?
You are not alone, just in a minority of people who are not familiar with something that is almost integral to US culture: that most people in the hospitality/services/restaurant industry depend more on tips than wages, and that the bigger the business (chain restaurants vs small local places) the more likely that their system involves pooling the tip money.
The point being made that you're repeatedly ignoring is that that in this scenario the staff gets the tips. Only the staff. In no point in time, whether it's individual tips or tips sharing, does the restaurant receive any part of the tips pool.
From the tipper's perspective, what would the difference be between the restaurant garnishing the waiter's tips vs the restaurant garnishing the waiter's tips and then giving some to the cook?
> And their hourly compensation, as ridiculously low as it may be, is never adjusted to compensate for higher than normal tips.
This varies by state. Google "server wage" and your blood will boil. It's illegal in WA, though — servers make standard minimum wage and employers can't take servers' tips.
Yes, minimum wage for servers is lower than for people who don't get tips. But it's still illegal to lower a person's wage below what was advertised because the person got a tip.
You're describing "server wage" laws, in which employers are free to steal tips up to the difference between real minimum wage and server wage per hour. In effect, servers in these states make above minimum wage during peak times and at most minimum wage off-peak. But they have to work off-peak or they don't get scheduled for peak hours.
In WA, this form of wage theft is illegal. Your statement, "minimum wage for servers is lower than for untipped workers" is false in Washington state, which is where the wage theft in TFA took place.
I don't see how my previous comment was confused. It was drawing a distinction between "server wage" and what Instacart is doing.
I never claimed "server wage" laws apply to this situation.
Also, the term "wage theft" seems like it doesn't apply to "server wage", because "server wage" is a construct specifically created by the law, whereas wage theft is something that's illegal.
It’s somewhat bullshit that the people who did all the work making the tasty meal get nothing, while the person handing it to you gets 20 percent. Especially when Seattle minimum wage is $15/hour and tips cannot count as part of that.
Having seen the wrong people get rewarded bonuses, RSUs and raises all the time. You are just better off with a salary band/pay grade and give money uniformly across the band.
Ideally 'top performers' are supposed to be rewarded for 'top performance'. But in any subjective evaluation you are just dealing with cooked up documentation to prove a person did something, therefore deserves extra. Pretty much any and anyone's story can be twisted and narrated in a way that could sound positive or negative, to reward or punish respectively.
You are better off with a tip pool and paying it across the band.
I've also wondered about it (though I know that bring a server is still by no means an easy task). I think Freakonomics had an episode on topping and reported (advertised?) some restaurants that split the tip between servers and cooks, or just don't let the customer tip but pay their employees more, upfront.
If the restaurant pays you less due to the expectation of significant tipping, then I do have a bit hard time too see why the practice of Instacart and restaurants differ that much. I guess you need to be American to understand this tipping logic.
Instacart is dynamically adjusting down wages in response to tips; restaurants have a fixed wage, with a legislated minimum — even if it accounts for average tips.
The difference is that one allows the customer to dynamically adjust the wages in response to service; while in the other the company is pocketing that variance themselves, rather than passing it on to workers.
It’s simply fraud to pretend one situation is the other — there’s a distinct and meaningful difference in who pockets tip variance.
At my first waiting job, we didn't report our full tips because if our income including tips surpassed $8, our salary would be reduced. With the "benefit" that if we made less than minimum wage, we would be compensated. However base pay was $2.50/hour + tips, so do the math.
Yet somehow the system only ever seems to work in one direction. I once had to pay $20 after working an 8-hour shift before leaving home under threat of termination (right-to-work state) because of the two tables I had that night, one was a giant party that didn't tip me at all and the other ran out on his $20 meal while I was taking care of other duties in the back. Somehow my responsibility, of course.
I have no doubt it was considerably illegal, however I would have been terminated immediately in a town where finding another job without a vehicle or parents would have been impossible, and since I was living on my own as a minor at this time it was pretty important that I maintained income.
After several more undoubtedly illegal maneuvers by a new manager to fire me and other waitstaff so that he could replace them with random girls he wanted to work for him so he could hit on them, being taken off payroll without clearing it with the senior manager, and afterwards being reduced to a single day a week on the slowest days, I quit.
I then had to leave the place I was living at two months later to a brand new city, contracted mononucleosis, and, not having any saved up money after quitting this job and unable to work due to being bedridden for 4-5 months, basically starved myself into extreme malnutrition other than the food I could steal and scavenge, surfing from couch to couch. So, essentially my worst fears about quitting my job over illegal practices were realized.
I could also tell you stories from other jobs about bosses pulling firearms on me, commanding me to do straight up illegal things like lie to the police, illegally withholding paychecks for entire staff for months at a time, illegal unpaid overtime, slashing wages between paychecks, working me into extreme injury from RSI and then subverting my ability to collect comp, firing me over "clerical errors" for trying to cancel a shift I didn't even mean to sign up for on a stupid new workforce app after my boss explicitly lying about my employment not being in jeopardy, etc, and all of the hardships I had to endure for leaving each of these jobs at my breaking point.
You all are being duped into contrived outrage. The example given in the OP link is very misleading and it is quite obviously cherry picking (to spark emotion) and is actually an outright lie. The truth is that Insticart actually pays a $10 minimum per delivery (this isn't even mentioned in the OP link) So how did this person make 80 cents an hour? The delivery was 0.7 miles and took 69 minutes. Ironically, under Insticart's previous policy, this delivery person would have made essentially the same amount. People making deliveries in dense urban areas (especially during traffic hours) can actually make far more than they used to.
I am not sure why delivering 6 bags of groceries took over an hour in this case. It is entirely possible however that they made several other deliveries in between Wegmans and this location (making a $10 minimum for each). It is possible that this person actually made $50+ during this 69 minutes.
So is not a typical scenario. I could put together an article just as misleading showing that Insticart pays a mint...
I don't like when people try to mislead me. Perhaps the fact that the tip is not going directly to the delivery person is offending some of your sensibilities. This is quite legal. Many states have done this for the past 80 years. I don't know how residents of states that practice this are surprised. All restaurants and other service industry locations you frequent do the same.
Being a food delivery person, a restaurant server or for that matter a McDonald's employee is not a skilled labor position and has never been a job someone should aspire to feed a family off of. We have people busting their butts, putting themselves through college, working their way up the ladder. We have 50k skilled labor jobs vacant in this country that pay a good wage and even offer training. People used to move across the country for these jobs. They used to leave their grandma's basement and go make something of themselves. Now we just have them making a bunch of noise over McDonald's not paying a Living Wage. Grow up. This world should not reward the lazy, it results in ever increasing mediocrity.
If the facts that I stated are incorrect, cite your sources. If you wish to debate something I said... I welcome it.
You place yourself in a weak position philosophically and argumentatively simply going for the old dumb bully method of personal attacks, character assassination, shouting someone down, insults ETC.
Is that really the best you can do? I pointed out inaccurate information and information gaps in this story. This claim reeks heavily and obviously of major bias. I wouldn't be surprised in an Instacart competitor actually is behind this. It's sad that others in this thread didn't already do the same. The group think and blind social justice here is really sad. There are many people here far smarter than I, yet they cannot see when such a weak and slanderous smear attempt is made?
If you want to change the labor laws to make tips and wage separate then go ahead. But just know that every restaurant and service company in states that allow this do it. If a certain business doesn't, they will have a hard time competing against the company across the street who does.
This 80 cents an hour case is so factually incorrect and lacking specifics that you and others should frankly be embarrassed to be making judgments based on it.
What the hell does that have to do with my comment and my own experiences?
I worked these jobs while trying to support and educate myself so that I could get a better-paying job.
At the same time, if 6-8 hours a day of Instacart deliveries isn't enough to provide you with an apartment, tuition money and food & entertainment for a wife and two children, then it's a service that shouldn't exist and it is only propped up by investor cash.
Because that is what minimum wage was originally meant to provide for an individual in America, before nearly a century of propaganda and misdirection convinced people like you that someone on minimum wage is lazy and doesn't deserve enough money to eat healthily, rent a decent apartment and have enough cash for some entertainment, and generally live better than someone in a third-world country, much less afford something like an annual vacation or car payments.
>"I worked these jobs while trying to support and educate myself so that I could get a better-paying job."
So did many of us. People are not supposed to have to support a family as a primary earner on minimum wage and they never were. According to the 2013 Bureau of Labor Statistics, full time minimum wage earners earn over the poverty line by more than $3,000 per year. Two minimum wage earners can support a family of four and live above the poverty line. Avoiding poverty is all about choices.
>"At the same time, if 6-8 hours a day of Instacart deliveries isn't enough to provide you with an apartment, tuition money and food & entertainment for a wife and two children, then it's a service that shouldn't exist and it is only propped up by investor cash."
>"Because that is what minimum wage was originally meant to provide for an individual in America, before nearly a century of propaganda and misdirection convinced people like you that someone on minimum wage is lazy and doesn't deserve enough money to eat healthily, rent a decent apartment and have enough cash for some entertainment, and generally live better than someone in a third-world country, much less afford something like an annual vacation or car payments."
You have your facts quite wrong about the minimum wage and what it was originally meant to provide. The minimum wage was first enacted in 1938 by FDR. It paid a meager 25 cents per hour (this is $4 today when adjusted for inflation). So it has become substantially more generous as time has gone on. This is the opposite of your claim.
People in third-world countries earn less than a dollar a day. I'm sure they would love to earn even the 25 cents per hour that the original minimum wage paid.
Everyone I know that has been stuck in minimum wage jobs have definitely been lazy or made very poor choices (like stealing from their employer ETC.) in fact, only 3% of people above age 25 in the US make only the minimum wage.
Get the actual facts before making biased and factually incorrect claims (and cite sources when doing so). It really hurts your credibility to just make things up and try to sound like an expert so maybe no one will call you on it and you will appear to make a valid point.
In my experience, nobody runs into that many problems without making a whole lot of bad choices and not reaching for the opportunities that exist. If you were a minor, you would have been a ward of the state. They would have paid to take care of you. You wouldn't even have to work. You could live, go to school, and get all your needs met for free. The life of a guy I grew up friends with reminds me of you and what you went through. He never listened to good advice and always ended up in bad situations. It is clear just by your demeanor and manipulation of facts that you have some challenges brought on by yourself.
If you are a minor, the state will take care of you.
If you are broke and not a minor, pass a GED, then get financial aid for a Junior College or Trade School. Join the military. Take one of these entry level skilled labor jobs, they train you for free and pay good (though you will probably have to move to another state). As you work there, put yourself though an online or local college (if you wish), or continue to work your way up in your trade.
I had another friend growing up that had a worse family situation then the first. He made good choices and took the opportunities that the other didn't. He stayed out of trouble with the law and others. He steered clear of drugs and alcohol. He is now upper middle class with a family and doing great. Life is hard, but in America,anyone with at least average intelligence can succeed.
Making laws based on emotions and feelings have got us nowhere in the last 80 years (in fact they have caused a lot of damage). It's because they proport that all those who start out less fortunate are victims and cannot succeed. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Look at all the government programs and affirmative action that have been made for African Americans over the last 80 years... Yet their poverty levels remain exactly the same. Why? We have created a culture of public assistance dependence and generations of "victims" with all the welfare. We have created a generation of fake achievers where employers have to wonder if a minority really excelled, or was just given a pass. Even some progressives are admitting to much of this finally (especially those arguing for a guaranteed basic income).
I've never shared a story on the internet about a hardship I've endured, large or small, without an apologist coming somewhere out of the woodwork to make assumptions that the only way I could have such shitty luck with people is by making a whole lot of bad choices. Apologists who have never met me, know nothing of my personality or socioeconomic background, what my childhood was like, nothing. Just strict, close-minded judgement based on preconceived notions. Congratulations, you're a statistic.
> If you were a minor, you would have been a ward of the state. They would have paid to take care of you. You wouldn't even have to work.
My experience with the State is that foster care where I grew up is the last place you want to be if you at all want a decent shot at a good future. We could talk about criminal indoctrination, institutionalization, lack of resources, lack of boundaries, lack of personal space and belongings, I mean really there are so many reasons why being a ward of the state fucking sucks.
> You could live, go to school, and get all your needs met for free.
In highschool, my mother didn't have a job. We were homeless at times. My sister tried very hard to stay in school but dropped out. My brother had the luxury of living with some extremely abusive relatives who fucked him up in the head and he dropped out as well. I took matters into my own hand and first worked hard to get accepted in a boarding school, and later when that didn't work out found a place to live, found a way to get to a job, and finished out high school. Getting an education was really important to me, and I did it despite an abusive, impovershed and malnourished childhood, despite my parents not being in my life or keeping jobs to help support me, despite a lot of things. And somehow you're finding a way to condemn me for it? How incredibly close-minded and judgemental of you.
> The life of a guy I grew up friends with reminds me of you and what you went through. He never listened to good advice and always ended up in bad situations.
Yes, GreenToad5, because we go way back as you know, and you know all about me. You know people that remind you of me, and you know that I never listen to good advice and always end up in bad situations. Just like your other friend, whom I'm not entirely inclined to believe you have made an accurate assessment of. Please, tell me all about my life and the mistakes you've seen me make. Pigeon-hole me some more with the handful of lazy shits you know.
> It is clear just by your demeanor and manipulation of facts that you have some challenges brought on by yourself.
This is literally delusional thinking. Nothing is clear based on what I wrote. I wrote two very vague and summarized posts about large portions of my life. You don't a single thing about any of the events I described except that they happened. It's insane to think you could derive anything else from that, even if you had a PhD in Psychology, which you obviously don't.
> If you are a minor, the state will take care of you. If you are broke and not a minor, pass a GED, then get financial aid for a Junior College or Trade School.
Again, I decided to get a job and work through highschool while homeless and parentless. And I passed high school with nearly a 4.0GPA and got a scholarship to every college I bothered applying to, with several full rides and paid-for state tuition. On track to actually do what I want to do, not settle for some stupid bargain job through a trade school, spending the rest of my working life doing something I don't like. As life would have it, a vindictive teacher illegally modified my final grade and refused to apply mandatory points that would still have passed me despite her modifications, and I failed a core class and had to forfeit all of my scholarships. Believe me, I was at the schoolboard, I was in the principal and guidance counselor's offices, I did not let it go--- and I was promised it woul...
This is really common in restaurants. Legal or not, it happens ALL the time. I've not only seen in in restaurants I've experienced it as a waiter as well.
>It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective.
In that case at least the staff get your tip. In this case Instacart is taking it for themselves.
There are issues with tip pooling, but there's one thing that I am absolutely sure of: my tip was not intended for the person's employer, and certainly not for anyone who claims to have arranged for the work to be done by a nominally self-employed contractor.
There's the crux. People may or may not think that their tip is going into a pool, but people definitely do not think that their tip is them saying to the establishment itself "I wish you'd charged me more!"
> It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective.
Absolutely. Thought its definitely more pernicious to find out the restaurant owner was keeping the tips.
Many many places do that. I worked in PizzaHut in NJ, and they pay you less than minimum wage initially. Then you report your earnings, and if your tips + salary / hoursworked < minimum wage, then they will pay you the difference to match minimum wage.
So you have incentive to report 0.0 tips. But then our manager at PizzaHut let go everyone who reported 0.0 tips (when asked why, he said they called customers to confirm we did receive tips).
And that's not only PizzaHut, that's everyone doing that, at least in NJ.
Many states have what’s known as a tipped minimum wage which is different from the minimum wage.
The tipped minimum is usually something like $2 vs the $7 minimum wage (these numbers are probably off now that so many places have raised the minimum wage to $10 or $12).
Since in this instacart case they ended up paying out $.80 an hour it’s below even tipped minimum wage standards, although I assume there’s some dodge about claiming the employees are contractors to get around paying wages.
It may be, Federal Law is more specific on tipping, allocation, role definitions in the restaurant industry, but not well expanded to define other industries. State law can further regulate . In spirit, a tip is an independant transaction between 2 parties and should be accounted as one. You must pay min rate for position (2.xx+?) and employee must make above fed/state min wage with tips once accounted, you must increase your compensation to make up a defecit between wage + tips vs min wage. You cannot pay below a certain wage regardless of tip amount, or maybe that's only in specified roles. I'm not sure.
I love how even knowing the company is stealing from their employees isn't enough to get you to drop using their service. I'm going to send at most 3 angry tweets about this before I forget about it and move on to the next thing to be upset about today.
While I agree that the parent comment should probably drop them. This comment won't get them to stop. Maybe something like proposing alternatives, and empathy. We don't know them so let's not generalize them into the crowd of 3 tweeters.
I use Uber from time to time. Knowing full well that they have some practices I admonish.
I use Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Safeway, etc. I try to be a better consumer with products but it doesn't always work.
I think we can approach this without the pitchforks and realize we all do this to some extent. The OP recognizes the problem and suggests they'll change their behavior. That's a win.
Parent - good luck moving off of the service. It's hard to swap something you've come to rely on out, and good on you for recognizing that as a consumer you need to make a change.
I'll drop them if it comes down to it, but if anyone actually read the link I shared it would show that what I'm doing is supporting the worker led action that is trying to make change. The workers themselves are asking people to keep using the service, but to only tip 22 cents in the app (paying the rest of the tip in cash) in protest.
I saw that and that's even better. Which is part of why I don't like people jumping on the shame bandwagon without knowing the full story.
Thanks for clarifying. Good on you for taking an active approach to this and being thoughtful.
Also - I think this is where the power of the unionization comes into effect. While Unions can be a tremendous blocker of progress I feel that the pendulum has swung too far the against them.
> how even knowing the company is stealing from their employees isn't enough to get you to drop using their service
why should it be?
ahh whaaat? mashes downvote button
since you are still reading, what is the exact thought process here, can you articulate this? So the service works and still provides a convenience for you, but is this action being masqueraded as the most effective way to get the company to change a policy amongst all other possible actions? Is it just to not "support" a company that does a single thing you disagree with? Is it something else?
I think there are more effective ways of bringing Instacart into compliance with your ideals. Isn't that a possibility?
edit: and no responses by time of writing while on the way to getting downvote censored. Be interesting to see if it flips when a different crowd gets off of work.
I would make the hypothesis that mass sternly worded emails would have the same desired effect as mass service cancelling.
or to put it another way, I would say that an individual cancelling to telepathically convey their disagreement with a company is just as effective as an individual writing a sternly worded email
I downvoted this comment because it's got not one, but two complaints about being downvoted. Also, because it seems to be very low empathy ("Why shouldn't we reward thieves if they're effective thieves on your behalf?")
So ignoring 90% of the post and the entire point of it, got it
The perspective of “rewarding thieves” is a perspective I asked for
Yet you wouldnt have even commented except for the meta downvoting mention. I dont even think you realize that the “first” downvoting complaint was part of the original post and wasnt a complaint, it was because people are predictable and maybe they would continue reading and contribute to the thread
Tipping in cash seems like the best way to support the workers. Keep in mind the workers themselves are organizing this campaign- they want people to put a 22 cent tip (to show solidarity) and then tip in cash.
If that doesn't work then of course I'm going to drop their service. I just believe that supporting worker led actions is the best way to push change at this very moment.
A lot of wait staff seem content to push mis-information: "If you tip poorly, the IRS makes us pay tax on it anyway, i.e. we're having to pay to serve you!"
No, the IRS makes an estimate on how much tipped workers are paid. If you document and it's less, then you pay tax on that. But using the IRS as the big bad wolf to get more tips that you know damn sure you're not going to report, doesn't make me the most sympathetic.
I've seen wait staff say that they believe 20% should be a baseline, for bad service, 25 for "decent" and 30% for good service...
I've never heard wait staff making claims like that about the IRS, but what I can say is that if wait staff didn't want to get more money, they'd be quite unique in that respect...
I worked a tipped job where we signed an agreement with the IRS to automatically report a flat rate of tips, regardless of what we actually earned. So on a bad day it was certainly possible to earn less than minimum wage. That said, I don't know how common such agreements are.
Admittedly, that's a good point. I somewhat view that as electing to always take the standard deduction, regardless of whether you'd get more itemized.
Not quite the same, but perhaps it's a quid pro quo, of sorts. "Ups and downs in the economy, we won't come after you for earnings above the flat rate, but you will pay when lower". Which does negate my point, but such an agreement is consensual.
I've never worked at a job with tips, but that agreement sounds weird to me. Do you have any more information on that? What is it called?
It doesn't seem to me that the IRS could just make "deals" with individual restaurants since congress has to actually legislate the internal revenue code. But I don't see anything when I search for what you describe.
I'm not even going to send an angry tweet. I'm going to keep ordering. If a driver takes the job, at the price Instacart wants to pay, it's on the driver, of course. And this works until it doesn't! Once people quit driving for IC, THIS is the market price signal which will cause the system to reconfigure. If IC can't get drivers, they must pay more!
I have zero illusions that enough people understand the free market to be patient and allow for this to happen. We need to teach more economics in grade school.
As a consumer, are you surprised that your tip is being used this way? I'd operate under the assumption that someone was being paid some sort of fair compensation, and my tip was an addition to whatever comp they earned.
Also, it's not clear to me, are the drivers told their comp for the job before accepting? Did this person know they would earn $0.80/hr?
The proof of the sketchiness is that if you call the DoorDash support line, their phone reps are carefully trained with exact wording to be as misleading as possible about this. If you bring up the way payments depend on tips, they will carefully reiterate the talking points.
You can learn a lot from how companies feel about their practices by looking at how they train the customer support personnel with talking points to avoid admitting certain of them.
I can't help but feel every time someone says "people don't understand the free market" its people who can't understand anything past the most simplistic explanation.
I'm going to leave you with a quote from Adam Smith who most would say founded the field of Economics.
> The interest of the dealers ... in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public... [They] have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public ... We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate ... It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.
There was a book [1] written about the myth that there are ethical consumers. Basically, no matter what people _say_ convenience, cost and other factors win out on the whole. I heard about the book in a recent Planet Money episode [2].
The problem is the company, not the commenter you're responding to. Is it really necessary for you to shame them when they expressed concern about this, just because they won't take as extreme an action as you want them to? They're expressing some honesty and self-awareness, and you're directing your outrage at them instead of Instacart.
Why don't you do something productive with your outrage, like changing your own lifestyle and keeping it to yourself? Or better yet, raise awareness without bullying someone else's attempt to process their frustration in an even-tempered way.
Same here. I’ve been using instacart since 3 years almost everyday. But this is it. I am off it. I can’t believe the greed that some companies go to, to take advantage of people struggling to make ends meet. Shame on them
OP mentions the tip 22c and then the rest in cash to show instacart they shouldn't be doing this. I think it's a fair approach to see if they can be persuaded to make the right call.
Same. I just tried to cancel my membership but the link isn't working. I contacted customer service to get a working URL and I will report back here when I receive it.
It is important to be tipping in cash to begin with. Anyone doing unskilled labor and getting tips is not likely in a position to be able to afford the income tax on those tips. Always tip in cash.
Breezing past your suggestion that workers should do some tax fraud, not reporting your tips also lowers your social security earnings which is going to lower your payouts as well.
... it's been a while since I've been in the USA, but isn't the Earned Income Tax Credit still a thing? That might also show up if you're not earning that much...
Anyone who is doing an unskilled job that receives some component of their tips in cash is already “do[ing] some tax fraud”. Perhaps I am projecting my familiarity with the food service industry onto others; if you were not aware, this is the overwhelming norm with a rate of occurrence approaching 100%.
If you are working a laborious job and you get cash tips, they go into your pocket. Full stop. To assert otherwise is to be simply unaware of the realities. No one scraping by with cash tips is summing them for their 1040. No one.
Keep in mind that if they're not earning much, they're probably not paying any income tax at all, and until they're earning at least $38,700, the most they'll be taxed on their taxable income is 12%.
I don't think that supporting tax evasion should be a primary reason for tipping in cash.
But there are other reasons why tipping in cash is a good idea, such as making sure that the money actually goes to the worker, and knowing that they'll have immediate access to it, rather than having to wait until their next paycheck.
> Some of us have seen wages lowered by 30–40% overall.
I think this a danger of contracting for VC-backed "gig economy" services like Instacart and Uber. They often subsidize the cost of the service using funding (billions, in the case of Instacart and Uber) in order to quickly attract customers and workers, then reduce the subsidies once they are established.
It's not right, but at this point gig economy workers should expect it and plan accordingly.
I've used it a half dozen times. The quality of has gone way down. The first time was amazing with the shopper suggesting a combo that was not only better but cheaper. And it was delivered an hour and a half later.
Now it seems they skip items, replace it without asking and the earliest delivery is tomorrow. And the produce has a lot to be desired. It'll last two days and already looks crappy on delivery. I think they are in such a rush they just grab whatever.
The best thing for any app service, keep 20 in singles and just tip cash. I honestly don't know how the app tipping works but I have a feeling the full amount isn't going to the person.
Do the right thing. Take a stand for human decency and make a compromise by closing your instacart account now. Absorb the inconvenience and do your own shopping. And make sure to tell instacart to (insert profanity of choice) if you can while closing your account. That behaviour is low down and dirty. Shady craigs list used car dealer level stuff.
I just walked three blocks in the rain to the local grocery store to pick up stuff to make dinner and food for tomorrow. Not like I was jumping for joy and made a dash for the door. I didn't want to, but I did. That's life.
You didn't explain why that's "the right thing". Making sure the worker is paid well is the most important part.
It's also possible that instacart will lose money on the sales where they can't scam tips; that means you can use the service and pay the worker well and punish instacart and increase the incentive for them to change their policy.
Respectfully, I think you're being a bit naive. At the moment, the evidence points to Instacart _not_ being the kind of company that will respond to "incentive to change policy", but that they _are_ a company that will commit wage theft. Pull the ripcord, delete accounts, tank all the metrics (MRR/DAU/WAU/MAU), and force the company to change or collapse. Subtle hints won't be effective here, as the response their community support indicates.
This is basically the argument for removing the minimum wage entirely. Some money is better than no money, right? I'd prefer not to live in that dystopia.
Or we can just make it very clear that companies that engage in outright wage theft should be put out of business, so no other business ever tries it in the future.
I don't think you understand my argument at all. I'm suggesting that the tips be rearranged so that the working is making significantly more than minimum wage, and the company can't scam their way out of paying what they promised to lure in workers in the first place.
I'm all for bringing a legal hammer down on them! I'm just saying that as far as personal action goes, getting them to lose money while their worker gets a healthy wage is better than a boycott.
Good for you, but arbitrary moral judgements against everyone else never goes well. Walking miles to gather food and water is the reality for billions of people.
Using Instacart is a luxury in the first place, but having everyone close their account only hurts the very people you seem to be for. In case you missed it in the article, there is a workaround so that your tips are correctly considered, or you can always pay cash: http://www.workingwa.org/22cents
If Instacart closes down because of this kind of shitty behavior, people may learn a thing or two, and the next company in this space might decide that wage theft is not going to be part of their competitive advantage.
>>There are ways to fix things without shutting it all down.
Same arguments were used to suppose slavery. If we make slavery illegal, where will slaves work apart from cotton farms?
There are other jobs to do, it doesn't mean we have to allow blatant injustice to go on, in exchange for profits. All the while using a moral arguments to justify it.
My issue is claiming moral righteousness of the struggle of shopping for your own food after using a luxury shopping app. I pointed out that the article itself asked customers to use a workaround so both sides get what they want.
Frankly I don't care about this company but equating this to slavery just comes across as more of the same virtue signaling.
Yep, exactly. I started using Instacart when it first came out. It was very convenient. But then I started to see more stories about how the company was changing the compensation structure. It got so bad that the delivery people were leaving flyers in the bags, made by that person, explaining how Instacart was basically screwing them.
I used the support form to request a full refund of the component of all tips that I’ve made that were used to offset DoorDash’s expenses. I doubt they’ll do anything but close the case but it’s wirth the annoyance.
I tried to find a way to close the account but there does not seem to be one.
The reason it pisses me off so much is I have used them like, 3+ times a week for 2 years, and every time I felt good about tipping which of course now feels... well, not good.
If you go to support and search for how to cancel your account, they tell you to file a support request asking for your account to be closed. So you did the right thing.
I wish I had thought to ask for a refund of tips too, but I already sent my support request.
If they refuse, you could probably take them to small claims court for fraud, depending on the total value and how much you care. Though you'll have to do your own research on how to prove fraud in court or hire a lawyer...
This isn't uncommon or new. Many states allow for tips to offset wages, even if wages fall below the minimum wage. Some states even have a separate minimum wage for tipper workers that is below the standard minimum wage.
If you want to blame someone, I suggest looking for the actual culprit and not a law-abiding company. This has little to do with Instacart and everything to do with state wage laws.
For many years, we've been in the habit of leaving restaurant tips in cash, because of various reports that restaurant managers would basically take card fees out of the tip. I recall hearing more recently that there has been some effort to crack down on that practice, but still, old habits.
> (3) The restaurant does not adjust wages after tips have been received
In many cases they do. If you receive zero tips for a shift, they are obligated to pay out minimum wage. If you receive $200 in tips for a shift, they pay out a lower figure, usually around $2.
A tipped employee must receive at least the tipped minimum wage before considering tips, and the normal minimum wage after considering tips. The only adjustment an employer is allowed to make is to increase an employee's base wage if the base wage + tips is less than the normal minimum wage. In no case can the base wage be less than the tipped minimum wage.
The people delivering here are "contractors", not employees, so this doesn't actually apply to them; what Instacart is doing here is merely reprehensible, as opposed to illegal.
This was posted by "Working Washington", so it seems reasonable to look at Washington state law: It requires tipped employees to be paid minimum wage. So does the rest of the west coast, including California (where Instacart has it's HQ).
It is, of course, entirely possible that the worker in question is not on the west coast, but Instacart is still welcome to pay a fair wage even if not required to by law, and Instacart should certainly avoid lying about their business practices either way (from the article: "Even Instacart seems to know how messed up it is to pay workers less when they get tipped more — which is why they’ve denied the practice when speaking to reporters at Business Insider & the Miami Herald.")
Washington state law does not apply. All of the State of Washington laws and constitution are fully invalidated and superseded by the American Arbitration Act.
> It is, of course, entirely possible that the worker in question is not on the west coast
The receipt was for a store named Wegmans. Those stores are located on the East coast (New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey).
Just because the law allows it doesn’t mean a company must do it.
It may be legal for instacart to take the tip money but it’s their decision to do so and they deserve the blame.
It’s wrong because the people paying the tip generally believe it goes to the person providing the service, not to the company. And it subverts the purpose, which is to incent and reward good personal service.
So the company ends up screwing their workers, deceiving their customers and disincentizing good service.
What absolute garbage, it defies the entire point of tipping. Is this even legal? If a restaurant got caught doing this, they would definitely lose many customers or even get run out of business.
It's the norm in many states, so I don't think so. I grew up in IL where waiters make something like $3 / hour. If that + tips is less than minimum wage then the company has to make up the difference. Not quite the same as they don't dock your pay if you make good tip money, but same principle.
It works out to the same end result (with the exception that waiters usually have some absolute minimum wage they can earn, so if a waiter makes 20$/hr in tips the restaurant still need to pay a bit on top of that.
One super annoying thing about this system and people choosing not to tip is a situation like this, assume a waiter is serving two customers in an hour, the local minimum wage is $9/hr and the sub-minimum wage is $3/hr, the first customer tips $4 dollars, yielding a potential wage excess of $2 (assuming a reliable rate) when the second customer tips $0 then the waiter ends up making no money beyond minimum wage. So if you're a tipper another customer that doesn't tip can cancel out your tip.
I'm not certain how these are aggregated from an accounting perspective, but I wouldn't be surprised if the window was either a full day or a pay period (in the latter case, every two weeks someone totals $3 * hrs worked, adds on total tips and verifies if that number is above $9 * hrs worked (do nothing) or is below (make up the difference out of the employer's pocket.
people should simply NOT tip. At restaurant maybe because it is socially mandatory, but anywhere else, a signal should be sent that it is stupid and doesn't make any economical sense to tip!
the market will necessarily sort itself out here. sad but true. if the workers are paid less, they will find employment elsewhere, the company will suffer (as they rightfully should).
Instacart has 1.9b in funding, if they are stealing from their workers, it only means that their business model is broken.. or we as consumers can fall into this dishonest game and normalize it.
If an employee who earns tips does not make the equivalent of minimum wage pay his or her hours worked, then the employer is required to pay difference (i.e., employees will be paid at least minimum wage for their work)
Not tipping still makes the workers still suffer, though, because with tips, many of many of them make above minimum wage.
Honestly, in the general case, I don't understand how anyone can manage to live on minimum wage, unless they live in a barracks, their mother's basement, or under a bridge.
That's exactly what they want you to think, and that's why this whole tipping nonsense continues.
If you stop tipping, Workers will not accept to work for low wages anymore.
Bu continuing to tip, you indirectly hurt workers.
>Workers will not accept to work for low wages anymore.
Right, because most service workers have a plethora of options, right? Tipping is a social construct that I'm fine with. I'm also open to the argument against it. I don't think it should give employers a pass on paying minimum wage.
The reality is that you are never going to convince enough people to stop tipping and, even if you did, you'd simply drive down the wages of people who already don't make much money.
The reality is that workers are part of an offer and demand market which is already adjusted to be at equilibrium with the tips.
If you remove some of the tips (not everyone will take part as you said), employers WILL have to adjust for it in order to reach a new equilibrium, or start losing workers.
Sure; they'll pay minimum wage or slightly above it. It's not a skilled position (I wanted tables for three years) and most places will take pretty much anyone who walks in. The vast majority of jobs are Chili's, not Morton's.
You speak of helping the workers, but you know what; they love the tip system. They make far more on tips than they would others. If you think Chili's is going to pay waiters 35k and bartenders 45k you're crazy.
I agree with this 100%. It's the same short-sighted approach that led to teachers getting paid pittances and forced to buy supplies out of pocket.
By in the short-term propping up those employees, we reduce the overall pressures to improve their conditions / negotiate better wages, and we've somehow managed to shift the blame from the employer to the employees and customers/students.
The signal is not sent by not tipping. You can disagree with it all you want, but the people who decide to institute tipping will not hear you if you don't tip.
This is why the tipping system in the US is absurd. The whole "you must tip because they get paid peanuts" argument is a circular logic. How about making sure that the worker gets paid fairly by their employer and customers can then optionally tip for outstanding service?
Hey, I really enjoy the imperial system (besides fahrenhiet). It gets more fun when you get beyond yards and pounds and into stones, hundredweight, and imperial tons and rods, chords, and furlongs.
That's not the logic behind the tipping system. It's, "tipping incentives employees to perform well because they'll make more money for doing a better job".
It doesn't work that way either, but that's the rationale.
Forcing people to tip to ensure people get paid enough money is a consequence of the system, not the reasoning why the system is implemented.
The very people collected those checks are making those arguments, directly. Lets be honest, service staff prefer the way it is. They can prey on their customers, and they end up making more than they would if paid min wage.
Most service staff are probably thinking within a set framework, where getting a minimal base pay is a foregone conclusion.
A more interesting and useful comparison would be to poll individuals who have held similar service industry jobs in countries that do and do not have tipping cultures, and ask them which they preferred and why.
Anecdotally, Montreal certainly has a tipping culture _and_ pays service staff the same minimum that everyone else is subject to. The restaurant prices aren’t any different from metros in the US. Really, there is no advantage to taking a lower wage to anyone but the restaurant owners issuing that wage.
Yeah, but, like the parent points out, that's not the rationale for having a tipping culture in the first place. It's just a well-intentioned attempt by people who live in a tipping culture to try and make it a bit less crappy for the people who have to suffer getting paid that way.
And/or a craven attempt by employers to further deflect any responsibility for responsibility for paying their employees. I noticed that the Curb app bumped the default tip rate to 25% at some point. I'm guessing that's somehow, directly or indirectly, leading to them or taxi companies getting to keep a larger cut of the fares.
I agree with you that tipping is a consequence of the system but I would argue the actual logic behind tippipng is that it allows employers to pay their employees less. Per federal law, tips can be used by an employer to satisfy the difference between the actual paid wage and the federal minimum. I would be very surprised if it was a waiters lobbying group pushing for this type of legislation. Several studies have also shown that there is very little relation between the quality of service provided and the amount of the tip.
Tipping really is a method for the employer to hold onto as much money as possible at the expense of staff.
As with many things in a America tipping started as a good idea, it was then taken too far and turned into a rather draconian setup where everybody is caught in a system you can't get out of.
From what I understand of US history, tipping was introduced when hotels and restaurants lost money because of the prohibition, as a way to supplement wages.
So it sounds like it is absolutely used as a bad way to supplement wages.
Plus all studies done on tipping have disputed this. Tips don't depend on the quality of service but rather on how attractive and flirty the waitress is.
Service is defined by how satisfied the customer is. Being attractive and flirty is a component (maybe not absolutely integral, but still a value-add, I think most would agree)
>That's not the logic behind the tipping system. It's, "tipping incentives employees to perform well because they'll make more money for doing a better job".
>It doesn't work that way either, but that's the rationale.
Indeed. The on the ground reality is that tipping does not serve this purpose. I don't know if it ever did, to be frank. Studies[0] generally show little to no correlation between performance and amount tipped.
And the reality is that tipping is the reason invoked in many state laws for paying restaurant workers less than minimum wage. Tipping is the reason they get paid poorly, and I always find it problematic that people invoke tipping as a way to help people, when it is the cause of their low wages. In those states, tipping is a big win for the restaurant owner. The customer pays more money out of his/her pocket, and the waiter often does not get much money.
Unlike others, though, I do not consider this wage theft (even at a moral level). We don't tip for many other services that we receive, and the problem of how those workers are compensated doesn't cross our mind. Why do we insist that tipping some category of workers has a moral component whereas others do not? Fixing those laws will be a challenge as long as tipping is commonplace.
Fuck it pisses me off how the conversation in America somehow shifted to make everything the fault of the poor.
Service disrupted because bus driver/garbage collector / teacher/hotel employee strike? How dare those selfish underpaid and overworked peasants stand up for reasonable hours! They should consider themselves lucky they have a job at all! (It should be: how dare the corporations or federal agencies pay so little to their employees that their only recourse was to risk their livelihood by walking off the job)
How about that case where the teacher used her health insurance to pay for an impoverished student's pills? She committed insurance fraud, she's just raising rates for everyone else! (Never mind that rates will be as high as an insurance company can legally get away with in this insane profit driven healthcare industry)
Or the housing crisis. Stupid proletariat, taking loans they knew they couldn't afford! Why didn't they educate themselves? (Instead of 1. Why weren't banks doing due diligence 2. Why were banks allowed to not do due diligence 3. Why the fuck don't they teach us basic financial skills in elementary school?)
capitalists!! leeching as usual!! blame the poor, is the mantra in the US. & the Illusion of convincing the poor that they can join the rich capitalist. r > g
This is why I refuse to tip in restaurants. Most people in san francisco that I know don't tip and as a consequence most waiters here don't expect a tip.
> This is why I refuse to tip in restaurants. Most people in san francisco that I know don't tip and as a consequence most waiters here don't expect a tip.
This is absolutely fucking hilarious.
I swear someone who is not from the US is going to quote your throwaway account as being gospel about how things are changing in the US.
Thank your for making my day brighter with your humor.
This is ridiculous! We need to start moving away from tipping. This reminds me of US restaurants. I'd much rather be charged mandatory service fees. It's a poor way to signal poor food/service by hurting those in front than the cooks behind.
> That's right: the customer's tip doesn't get added to the worker's check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker.
My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0]
Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money it generates. There are legal expectations around how the money goes from the customer to the worker.
Yup, and Washington state specifically does not allow tip credits. Tips in WA are always on-top or hourly wage. (Which is why even a terrible bartender in Seattle can do pretty well.)
But as soon as someone 1099's you, you're out of luck. Found this out the hard way when I got 1099'd by a startup I was working for in 2017. The IRS has a mechanism on the Federal level to fix things enough to avoid the higher tax burden, but WA state explicitly requires a W2 from an employer for even the most basic of unemployment benefits (the determination letter from the IRS apparently doesn't count).
So go the other way and report them for abusing 1099, for 1099 to be legal they can't even directly give you any hardware, you need to pay for it yourself, I think there are even laws about using their desks.
What I'm trying to say is that even if you report them for 1099 on the federal level, you do not necessarily convert to "employee" status in a state's eyes. This has an impact on your ability to file for unemployment, tax burdens, etc. You'd think that the federal opinion would influence the state's, but there's a breakage.
Also add on the fact that in Seattle the tipped minimum wage is 12/hr, where you only need to serve 20 dollars an hour worth of food in order to be making above minimum wage with tips should you also be busing your own tables.
Instacart delivery workers are classified as independent contractors, which allows the company to flout basic labor laws. This is commonplace in digital age 'gig economy' jobs, but dates back to the early days of food delivery - e.g., most pizza delivery drivers are classified as independent contractors.
That having been said, the concept of defining contractor wages in relation to customer tips is new to me. I could see a legal argument being made in the employer's favor if the worker gave due consent to the transaction.
The idea here would be: Instacart states somewhere on the order prior to pickup 'if you choose to accept this order, you will receive $10, of which $.80 will come from us.' Since the delivery worker isn't running a 'shift' as an 'employee,' but just coincidentally happens to be running Instacart orders for 10 hours straight, this counts as one of many transactions that they've accepted and hence waived the legal right to complain about.
If this legal fiction sounds absurd to you, you're not alone.
I would agree, if the app didn't say "tip for delivery person" instead of "tip for instacart" or something maybe more ambiguous like "tip." Take a look at the screenshots of their app being discussed here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/04/24/instacart-...
Insidious, right? 100% of the tip technically does go to your shopper.
Welcome to the world of 'tipped wages'. In my state, every paycheck, the first $520 worth of tips effectively goes straight to your employer for the purposes of paying your minimum wage and then you can have whatever is left over.
I think that may be the theory Instacart is using, but I suspect it hasn't been tested, and that they're doing this under the move fast, flout legal conventions until someone makes you stop startup strategy.
They don’t believe it either, but it’s convenient lie, like corporations being people. It’s ridiculous, but as long as it’s the law and the people benefiting tip their politicians well, whomp whomp.
> You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money it generates.
That's simple fraud. It's like going door to door collecting money for a charity and then just pocketing the money. Potentially Instacart will need to refund those 'tips'
I'm very curious to find out what may be in instacart's TOS here. Because at face value, and without hyperbole, this does look like it could be fraud. It seems unlikely that their legal team was not aware of potential issues here.
The strange thing about this is that it may actually be fraud against the people buying from instacart. The ones giving the tip. I'm curious then what kind of damages a customer could sue for beyond the amount of the tip. And I'm also curious if instacarts TOS for customers forces arbitration and prevents class action lawsuits.
I hope that one of the employers in the new “gig economy” gets taken to court over the contractor-versus-employee issue and that the case sets a sane precedent. An old joke (“western koan”?) comes to mind:
Suppose that we decide to call dogs cats. In that case, what is a domesticated canine? Answer: it’s a dog, whatever you choose to call it.
(Pretty sure I butchered that, but hopefully the point still came through.)
How many restaurants have $1.9B in funding and are valued at ~$8B? There's also an obfuscation on payment to workers that doesn't happen in a restaurant.
My understanding is that wages from the restaurant are fixed and tips do not count towards them unless the employee does not hit minimum wage- at which point the restaurant has to pay them more. I have never heard of a restaurant paying an employee less because they got more tips.
But I have never worked in a restaurant so I could be completely wrong.
This is a distinction without a difference. There is no practical difference between paying less "because tip" and not paying the tip. The legal system is not staffed by robots, either. I don't see how they can defend a class action regardless of what words they've written on a TOS.
> There is no practical difference between paying less "because tip" and not paying the tip.
There is, because the pay can't go negative.
> The legal system is not staffed by robots, either. I don't see how they can defend a class action regardless of what words they've written on a TOS.
It depends on what the lawsuit is for. Normally we have things like "minimum wage" but those don't apply if you manage to convince everyone it's a contractor situation. If they can be classified as employees then there's all sorts of lovely anti-tip-taking law. But that's a big if. And I don't think contractors have tip laws? It's not generally illegal to say one thing about how your company allocates money coming in and then do another.
Also the increasingly common practice where a seller takes your money, wrongs you in the most blatant way, such as just not sending half of your order (Instacart), charges you for wasting your time and never providing any service (Uber) and when you complain, they keep your money and give you their Monopoly money instead.
I feel like for someone somewhere in the attorney general's office, prosecuting these should be someone's full time tax paid job.
A restaurant in my neighborhood did not have tipping before New York raised its minimum wage to $15 because they paid their servers a "fair wage". It has since re-implemented tipping.
Not only do they steal tips, they also jack up the prices of the food itself. I make six figures and honest to god I have no idea how anyone affords to use DoorDash.
> DoorDash, which launched in 2014, services 15 metro areas in the U.S.; like many other delivery apps, it employs couriers to pick up food from restaurants and deliver it to customers. But beyond the usual delivery fees, taxes, and tips customers will shell out for, DoorDash also inflates the cost of each menu item — often unbeknownst to customers. For example, a sandwich that costs $10.99 directly from a restaurant might be listed as $14.95 on DoorDash, and the app gives customers no indication they're being upcharged. As Bloomberg notes, "Other delivery apps, such as Postmates and Square Inc.'s Caviar, typically list the same prices as those on the restaurants' menus."
this is not always true. my restaurant was listed on doordash without my permission or request, with a butchered menu and completely incorrect prices.
multiple requests asking them to at least fix this info or take me off the platform altogether (because customers were starting to wonder why my prices were so low on doordash - they're not, the couriers paid the current amount in-store...) and they ignored me. it wasn't until i signed up to be contacted about being a restaurant partner that they finally paid attention.
of course, once i registered interest in partnering with doordash, they spammed me with requests to sign the terribly lopsided agreement, and then took my restaurant off as a "bargaining" chip. yeah, okay. works for me.
so, tl;dr, if a restaurant isn't directly partnered with doordash, they can do whatever the heck they want with the prices.
(which, speaking of restaurants setting prices, they all definitely have clauses in there about not charging more than you would on other services. they definitely let you upcharge... i was half tempted to put up burgers for $20 each, for real...)
Did you contact a lawyer about this incident at all? It seems like a wilful misrepresentation (advertising that your establishment is available on this service when you've explicitly said no) that switches into a kind of extortion (the threat of de-listing).
DoorDash seems to be the best value to me with their DoorPass option. I don't find the markup to be completely unreasonable, it makes sense to me and never felt shady, they have to make their money somehow.
It becomes a bit more reasonable with 2 or more people. But yeah, even then the pricing is insane on these services. From my recent Caviar order (USD):
27.35 - actual face value of food (same as the in-store menu, at least for this restaurant)
2.32 - Tax
1.30 - "Healthy SF fee"
2.00 - Courier Bonus
4.92 - "Service Fee" (huh?)
1.99 - "Delivery Fee"
I want the worker to receive 100% of the tip as much as anyone.
But does anyone else find it obnoxious that all these digital services exist, often starting out with no tip straight pricing, then tipping re-appears, and then you suddenly need physical cash to morally use the service at all?
Obviously workers should get fairly compensated. The problem is tipping culture itself, just set a price that customers are willing to pay and workers can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.
Plus the whole tipping thing is extremely inconsistent. Floral delivery? No tip. Pizza delivery? Tip. Some brands support credit card tipping, others don't, and even the ones that do you have to research how much using it hurts the employee...
The US needs law changes that outlaw tipping. It will be culturally painful while we adapt but once we do both workers and customers will be better for it.
No, it just needs to not treat workers that might receive tips differently: they should have he same minimum wages as other workers and tips should not count as compensation by the employer satisfying minimum wage mandates.
Private employers might then wish to prohibit employees accepting tips (since it no longer benefits the employer as it does now for the worker to be classes as “tipped”), for similar reasons to those for which public employers already do.
EDIT: And we need better enforcement (and possibly slight changes to the basic rules) against mischaracterization of employees as contractors, which is most of the problem in this case.
> No, it just needs to not treat workers that might receive tips differently: they should have he same minimum wages as other workers and tips should not count as compensation by the employer satisfying minimum wage mandates.
Now they're getting minimum wage and I still feel the need to tip. That doesn't fix the problem unless we also make major changes to the minimum wage.
> Private employers might then wish to prohibit employees accepting tips (since it no longer benefits the employer as it does now for the worker to be classes as “tipped”), for similar reasons to those for which public employers already do.
They wouldn't do that at minimum wage, and they get negative value out of a combined pay-more/anti-tip policy.
I don't think it's enough to fix the problems with tipping culture.
> Now they're getting minimum wage and I still feel the need to tip.
I'm not sure that your dislike of your own sense of obligation is sufficient cause for a legal prohibition on tipping. I think you should be free to tip (though employers should likewise be free to prohibit employees from accepting tips, and should have fewer reasons not to do so than they currently do.)
OTOH, I would get behind (and meant to include this before) prohibiting employers from taking, offsetting, or redirecting tips, including directing employees in a sharing regime; requiring tips, if given and accepted (employers would be permitted to prohibir the latter as a condition of employment, so long as the policy was uniform) to be property of the recieving employee independent of the employer. Basically, they are now a dodge around sales taxes for many employers, but effectively still revenue that the employer controls, within some limits, which gives employers a big reason to protect tipping culture.
What sense of "obligation" are you referring to? If it is obligatory then it definitely should be outlawed, because it becomes false advertisement of prices.
> What sense of "obligation" are you referring to?
The sense of “sense of obligation” in play when one says “I feel the need to tip”, as I would have thought was obvious by the quoted bit I responded to.
> If it is obligatory then it definitely should be outlawed
It is not actually obligatory (except where it is advertised as required, in which case there is no false advertising), even if some people have a sense of obligation which demands tipping.
Agree. Though the more I think about it, this is an opportunity for disruption. TaaS. An e-commerce platform, maybe even validated and protected on the blockchain, where users can exchange digital payments in an effort to circumvent these horrible practices.
It should also be noted that the need to tip for the perspective of workers having a decent standard of living varies a ton from place to place. In Seattle the tipped minimum wage is 12 dollars an hour at small employers and doesn't exist at large one's (where the minimum wage for large employers is 16/hr).
Tipping law for the most part isn't changing largely because tipped workers make more money under the status quo. For those familiar with the restaurant industry, tons of folks turn down management roles because they pay less than working the floor.
I was a huge user of Instacart 2 years ago when my nearest grocery store turned into one of the busiest Whole Foods in my city that I didn't enjoy dealing with.
The way they keep working to create opaqueness around their tipping to the point that last year Drivers were handing out pamphlets explaining how to remove the "Service Fee" (which nobody but Instacart gets) to tip the drivers was a huge red flag. Removing the service fee was on a 2nd page you had to go to and by default I believe was 10% of your order. If you've never used Instacart the groceries in my experience have been quite a bit more expensive than they'd be in stores so they're making revenue on that end already.
I started using them a bit again this year and now there's only a "Driver Tip" section with I believe a hard locked in service fee. Does the shopper get the tip as well? Is the driver the shopper as well now? In my situation the shopper is doing FAR more work than the driver. I want to tip the people well because I know Instacart doesn't pay well, but I don't want to give a $26 tip for $130 in groceries (which is usually 3-4 bags) going to the person who only spent 10 minutes in a car to drop my groceries off at my front door (and Instacart drivers never read the Delivery notes, I've had to walk out and walk them over to me each time last year that I ordered).
Is the tip split between the shopper and the driver? It only says "Driver Tip".
Everything just seems to be disgustingly opaque with this company and I really do not feel right even using it anymore so I've used it incredibly sparingly (maybe 3 times last year) as of late.
edit: I just checked, there's an info icon and it says 100% of the tip goes to the driver. So should I not tip based on the entire process of shopping and delivery? I don't even want to use this app anymore because I shouldn't have to stop and waste time considering these things.
This company just screams deceptive to me. Guess I'll be done with it.
100% of the tip goes to the driver yes. but, that statement is completely compatible with instacart changing how much they pay their driver for that delivery down to 80 cents. I hope this was a mistake on the part of instacart.
> I hope this was a mistake on the part of instacart.
According to the screenshot of Instacart's email, they confirmed this is accurate and was most definitely not a mistake. And according to the article, Instacart has doubled-down instead of apologizing.
Come to think of it their aggressive upselling techniques always left a bad taste in my mouth. I do like the service but they really need to up their pay for their drivers.
Drivers also have wear, tear and usage of their car, which a shopper does not. Also, the shopper is much less likely to get in a deadly accident than a driver. Not saying shoppers don't deserve tips too. Just kinda laying out all the costs and risks of driving.
Yep, personally, when I go to mcdonalds, I like to pay the guy at the register, the people cooking, the manager, and the unfortunate individual on trash duty all separately.
Additionally, I refuse (on basic principle) to eat at any restaurant where I haven't mapped out their entire supply infrastructure. I made myself an app that keeps track of how much I spend at each of these restaurants in any given month and then I tip each entity a healthy percent (20% being the minimum because really if you can't afford 20% you can't afford to eat out). Currently, I'm tipping the truck drivers that deliver supplies, the factory workers who prepare the frozen food, the farmers, the accountants, the HR department, and the people who do road maintenance on the streets that all of the above use to get to work.
True. But lets be clear. I'm tipping everyone in the supply chain. They also get paid by their employer.
... You know now that I'm talking about it. I don't think I tip stockholders of C-Corps. I did consider S-Corp stockholders and decided that they probably shouldn't get a tip, but C-Corps stockholders are kind of part of a financial supply chain if you think about it.
Now that we're on the topic, can anything think of anyone else I'm leaving out? I wouldn't want to ignore the hard work of the people who make my daily life possible.
I mean, if that utility of every part of the supply chain was actually surfaced and you could make payments directly to parts of the supply chain, I could see trying that business model out as a consumer.
Whats happening here is that companies have figured out they can just extract value out of a subset of their employees and pass the cost onto their customers by manipulating social norms.
If I'm paying the worker directly they should be treated like a contractor, but the companies want the control of hiring an employee and the responsibilities of hiring a contractor
I mean, I see what you're saying. I really do. But it feels a bit cynical to me. Personally, I think everyone should try giving 20% (or more, haven't you ever received some freshly cooked chicken nuggets and just knew that they were delivered to the store with extra care) to every individual and/or corporate entity in the entire supply chain. It just increases the feeling of community in an ever growing global landscape.
I don't agree, I think money is a fairly poor incentice for increasing the level of community and might even do the opposite and make it too profit-based. I think everyone should be putting the extra effort on treating others with care instead! That increases the feeling of community.
Got those lovely nuggets? Buy there again, tell their manager how great the service was, and be a great customer. Also, treat better the next person you interact with, don't just offset your morale to paying some dollars and then be an asshe...
You say that in jest, but this sort of thing really is a potential use for the tech.
Imagine a widget where every link in the supply chain is paid proportionately, instead of each layer trying to skim what they can. If a salesperson sells the product for 10% more, they get 10% more commission - and the distributor gets 10%, and the manufacturer, and the producer of the raw materials, and the transportation provider, and...
Their jobs might have different value for this to happen at all. Usually that’s exactly what the market does, assign value. The 10% margin sounds in general fair but depends on so many factors, margin on what? Production, Research, Investment ?
I don't disagree, but I see nothing wrong with using a tool like that if everyone agrees it's a good idea. It needn't be the entire supply chain, either - individual portions could set up profit-sharing arrangements using contracts.
I don't know if it would actually be used, but if you wanted to do something like this, a blockchain would make a good deal of sense; especially if payment for the finished product was made through the same mechanism.
Why is 'service' seen as a separately billed item, paid for by the tip, in a restaurant in the US? Why isn't it included in the bill for the food, like everything else is?
Because standing in line for food is cheaper than having someone personaly serve it to you? You are not so much paying for a potato, as you are paying for it to be fried, packaged, and in your hand, quickly and reliably.
i heard this same thing from an instacart worker more than a year ago. at the time i was confused and kind of doubted her story, but now i see that Instacart employment really is just as shitty as she said. wow.
In part because they’ve added a layer of deception to the practice. In part—and I’m speculating here—because this is a young company, founded and run by people in (or nearly in) our cohort, and were disappointed in them as peers (albeit peers who struck it rich).
717 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 341 ms ] threadFor some people though there just aren't a lot of jobs available that match their education and experience.
People that are desperate for money are frequently exploited. Whether it's through wage theft, or unsafe employment practices, or simply demeaning behavior.
Unfortunately, in this economy, it's probably more accurate to say "most people really don't have options" rather than "some"
So while it's a 'strong market' in the sense that 'unemployment is low', it could also be examined from another angle. Which is the rise of the gig economy giving people a lot of opportunities for work, but work that comes at a cost of being heavily exploited like with Instacart. Nor does it say anything about whether or not people are holding full time vs part time jobs or the stagnant wage issues.
When you have a felony a lot of higher-paying unskilled jobs will simply filter you out as being too high risk or likely to cause trouble. So the only places that will hire these kinds of people can get away with crazy tactics like the ones people are discussing in these threads. When your choice is exploitative tactics or literally no other option because the entire market has you blacklisted you are going to take the horrible option knowing full well it is a horrible option.
Are cash tips an effective method of keeping grubby corporate hands out of it?
My mom was a waitress most of my life and made decent money, so I always tip 20-25% and a minimum of $5 unless I get extra shitty service. Depending on where you and your coworkers ate at, I would say they were just cheap asses.
Edit: I meant shouldn't.
Firing one guy because he won't steal from your customers won't fly if the union tells your entire development team to walk and they'll cover wages until they get a better job.
Fraud n. the intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive another of his/her/its money, property or a legal right.
RCW 49.46.020 section 3:
"Tips and service charges paid to an employee are in addition to, and may not count towards, the employee's hourly minimum wage."
RCW 49.46.020 section 3:
"Tips and service charges paid to an employee are in addition to, and may not count towards, the employee's hourly minimum wage."
Source: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.46.020
It's obviously a terrible system, but is this different from how most everywhere with tipping in the US works? I've never worked a tipped job in the US.
However, the absolute bare minimum the employer was allowed to pay was 50% of minimum wage. Not sure if this was just state-specific or if it changed.
I mean, it's hard to fathom how you could get worse than $0.80. But less than half that? That's worse for sure.
From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I'm a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I'm going to be tipping in cash.
https://medium.com/@workingwa/instacart-heres-our-22-cents-n...
This is 100% wage theft.
I think the question though is _why_ is that? If I steal $950 from someone then it's criminal, but if I refuse to pay them what I agreed then it's civil. It's an odd discrepancy IMO.
In this case they're doing something (questionably) legal but terrible.
There are plenty of cases out there of outright wage theft. I wouldn't have a problem with the people in charge of those decisions getting arrested.
Taking stuff away from people, though, is not necessarily theft, and also not necessarily criminal. If you accidentally take someone else's property because you confused it with your own, for example, that's not criminal, but the other party still has a civil claim against you (namely, to be given back their property).
On the other hand, if you intentionally mislead someone into providing you with some service or product, promising to pay them for it, even though you never intended to pay, that constitutes fraud and is very much criminal.
Generally, it's criminal if it's in the interest of the public and civil if it is primarily in the interest of some party. Not paying some debt because you actually have doubts that you have to pay, or due to an honest mistake is not really something that affects anyone else. Someone intentionally causing situatons where others can't rely on them fulfilling their legal oblications can erode trust in a society, therefore it is in the public interest to prevent that. The boundaries can be fuzzy, but wage theft can very much be criminal.
Why do you keep saying things to this affect?
A company stiffing a supplier is going to rapidly find themselves without suppliers, or the supplier can afford to / accounts for being stiffed on some orders.
An independent contractor who works for one, or maybe two very similar types of, company is very much like an employee in every way that matters to that individual “independent” contractor, and literally nothing like a B2B supplier.
Additionally, you seem preoccupied with existing legislation as though it has some higher virtue, whereas in reality the law can be, and frequently is, unjust and absurd.
I'd be surprised if calling something a "tip" makes it legally obligated to go to a contractor. I'm sure their lawyers are very aware of the law on this. As someone else said, there is almost certainly a binding arbitration clause. This removes the possibility of individual or class-action lawsuits.
edit: The abuse of the term "independent contractor" is just one of many examples of how labor law enforcement has become lax in the last several decades. How many people on this site aren't in management and work unpaid overtime?
I don't think "oh the tip went to the contractor we just lowered their wages by the same amount" sounds convincing in a court room.
In fact, I would hesitate to say that the lawyers for most startups have any clue what they're doing, as most seem to be in it to play startup lawyer rather than provide necessary legal advice to their client/employer.
But it does not remove the ability of the court to overrule the clause itself. So someone could still sue Instacart knowing that it will be thrown out if the court decides to enforce the clause.
In my life experience, these things are almost always up in the air until a judge says otherwise.
Getting to the contractor thing, the most workers can really do is file IRS Form SS-8 and see if the IRS will release them of some of their tax obligations. Other than that, there's really not that much enforcement.
Source: I was a misclassified contractor in 2017 while working in WA state. IRS forgave some of my tax burden, but Labor/Industries and Employment Security are absolutely useless if you don't have a literal Form W2 to use.
Which they will. There's been a few recent cases that have made mandatory arbitration clauses more-or-less bulletproof.
That is textbook fraud.
It depends on the agreement between Instacart and delivery staff.
I don't know how the contractor status of Instacart drivers affects this. They're not technically employees. But the verbiage of "Tip" in the UI is a strong signal to the customer that the money is directly credited to the driver. It should bear no relation to their fee from Instacart.
This is wage theft. A horrible agreement doesn't make it right, even if it is legal.
Does the independent contractor bring more than their personal labor?
Do they hire crew of their own or are they bringing other employees?
Or, are they bringing heavy or costly specialized equipment?
Are they an established business, working without your direction or control?
Are they free from your supervision, direction or control?
Is the individual’s business different and separate from your own?
Is the individual’s service “outside the usual course of business,” or in other words, does the contractor do something different from what you do?
Is the individual’s service being performed “outside of all of the places of business,” or in other words, does the contractor perform the service away from where you perform your services?
Is the individual contractually obligated to pay costs affiliated with the location from where the work is controlled (usually its headquarters)?
Does the individual have an established independent business that existed before you brought them on – OR – does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an IRS business deduction?
Do you have evidence to demonstrate that the individual has an established business?
Does the individual have a principal place of business that qualifies for an IRS business deduction? Do you have evidence to demonstrate it?
Is the individual responsible for filing a schedule of expenses with the IRS, such as would be part of a business tax return?
Does the individual have all required registrations and licenses for their business?
Does the individual maintain his/her own set of books and records that reflect all income and expenses of the business?
This question is for construction contractors only: Is the individual a properly registered contractor?
Note that this is not an "Answer 'yes' to any question to be considered a Contractor", it's a "totality" thing. (https://www.lni.wa.gov/IPUB/101-063-000.pdf)
"I subcontracted some work to a guy who has a contractor’s registration with L&I. Doesn’t that mean he’s not my employee?"
Not necessarily. L&I auditors look at “direction or control” and other factors described on the previous pages. Because he is a construction contractor, all seven parts of RCW 51.08.181 must be met.
And so on...
This is a very common setup in other pay structures as well, such as commissioned sales where you are paid a "draw" (such as minimum wage) and you don't paid get any commission until your commissions exceed minimum wage.
What's more, the tip money did go directly to the driver; Instacart just decided to pay less.
It's a pretty inhumane thing to do but on the face of it I don't see how it's wage theft. Welcome to the gig economy.
Here's some more information about how it works legally: https://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/legal-consider...
It's immoral as fuck to steal tips. I don't care if it's legal. If I'm a customer tipping the person a certain amount I want to make sure it's actually helping that person and not just lining the pockets of their employer, that's absurd.
Instacart is going to get fucked very quickly by the Washington AG. This is as bad as Walmart not paying employees for overtime.
in any case, this is really awful for the poor drivers. I had no idea.
They should have to pay back "the winnings" by 3x and fire the people involved.
Any dispute will go to a monkey court instead.
No, they aren't; binding arbitration is a venue for resolving disputes about the application of laws, it doesn't supersede the laws, and manifest disregard for the law is one of the few reasons for courts setting aside a binding arbitration decision.
Thought experiment: could Instacart assault, kidnap, or murder a delivery driver and claim that arbitration is the only venue for redress?
The notion that you should overpay your own taxes to solve this is just bewildering.
It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective.
I'm more upset about this line from Instacart:
> We include tips in the calculation [of pay for deliveries] so that you can get a more accurate picture of what your earnings will be after completing a batch.
This is incredibly dishonest. They're arguing with a straight face that they're doing you a favor by smoothing your earnings from an unpredictable (for example) $8-$50 per hour down to a more reliable $8-$9 per hour.
This is actually the same argument the US government advances in favor of its sugar tariff. Sure, it raises the price of sugar by 200% on average, but it protects us from the awful unpredictability of the world sugar price.
First, restaurant staff always know ahead of time if they have to share tips.
And their hourly compensation, as ridiculously low as it may be, is never adjusted to compensate for higher than normal tips.
And, finally, in most restaurants the tip pool is also split up with bussers, bartenders, and hosts who don't always make tips of their own, but still contribute to the overall experience.
The third point is also correct, but in that case I think it supports the idea that the tipper is being defrauded when it happens.
I don't see how any shorter treatment would be a sufficient explanation.
I mean, imagine the scenario where the server just buys a line cook a drink to say thank you. Fraud!
That would be a case of the server getting the money and deciding to buy something for the cook.
Whereas in an actual tip-sharing restaurant, the server gets his share of the tip pool after the cook's share has already been taken out. He doesn't get a choice in the matter.
This is generally not what the people giving the tips have in mind.
Can you substantiate that in any way with any kind of evidence or is it a baseless claim?
If I tip someone well, it's because they've been incredibly attentive, kind, accommodating, etc. As much as possible, I want the tip to brighten their day. The effect is greatly diminished if that money is immediately divvied up amongst the other servers, making the difference to what they bring home negligible.
I've never worked as a server (though I did work at Chik-fil-A in highschool; employees are not allowed to accept tips there), and I did not realize that many restaurants are involved in the handling of tip money, rather than the tips going directly to the respective server.
So, no, that's not what I had in mind.
Why should anyone expect that sort of handling of tips? Not everyone has worked a job involving tips. I didn't. Should I have spontaneously asked one of my server friends "hey, btw, how are tips handled at your job? Like, I suspect that when I tip someone, you know, that money goes to them, because after all, I gave it to that person and not the restaurant and not anyone else, but just in case I'm mistaken, could you tell me what happens with the tip money after I leave it on the table? It's a question that's been gnawing at the back of my mind, and I just had to ask!"
My point being: unless you're a server at one of those restaurants, how would you know that your server doesn't get the tip you left for them? Could you substantiate such a claim?
This varies by state. Google "server wage" and your blood will boil. It's illegal in WA, though — servers make standard minimum wage and employers can't take servers' tips.
You're describing "server wage" laws, in which employers are free to steal tips up to the difference between real minimum wage and server wage per hour. In effect, servers in these states make above minimum wage during peak times and at most minimum wage off-peak. But they have to work off-peak or they don't get scheduled for peak hours.
In WA, this form of wage theft is illegal. Your statement, "minimum wage for servers is lower than for untipped workers" is false in Washington state, which is where the wage theft in TFA took place.
I never claimed "server wage" laws apply to this situation.
Also, the term "wage theft" seems like it doesn't apply to "server wage", because "server wage" is a construct specifically created by the law, whereas wage theft is something that's illegal.
Having seen the wrong people get rewarded bonuses, RSUs and raises all the time. You are just better off with a salary band/pay grade and give money uniformly across the band.
Ideally 'top performers' are supposed to be rewarded for 'top performance'. But in any subjective evaluation you are just dealing with cooked up documentation to prove a person did something, therefore deserves extra. Pretty much any and anyone's story can be twisted and narrated in a way that could sound positive or negative, to reward or punish respectively.
You are better off with a tip pool and paying it across the band.
https://www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/post...
The difference is that one allows the customer to dynamically adjust the wages in response to service; while in the other the company is pocketing that variance themselves, rather than passing it on to workers.
It’s simply fraud to pretend one situation is the other — there’s a distinct and meaningful difference in who pockets tip variance.
Yet somehow the system only ever seems to work in one direction. I once had to pay $20 after working an 8-hour shift before leaving home under threat of termination (right-to-work state) because of the two tables I had that night, one was a giant party that didn't tip me at all and the other ran out on his $20 meal while I was taking care of other duties in the back. Somehow my responsibility, of course.
After several more undoubtedly illegal maneuvers by a new manager to fire me and other waitstaff so that he could replace them with random girls he wanted to work for him so he could hit on them, being taken off payroll without clearing it with the senior manager, and afterwards being reduced to a single day a week on the slowest days, I quit.
I then had to leave the place I was living at two months later to a brand new city, contracted mononucleosis, and, not having any saved up money after quitting this job and unable to work due to being bedridden for 4-5 months, basically starved myself into extreme malnutrition other than the food I could steal and scavenge, surfing from couch to couch. So, essentially my worst fears about quitting my job over illegal practices were realized.
I could also tell you stories from other jobs about bosses pulling firearms on me, commanding me to do straight up illegal things like lie to the police, illegally withholding paychecks for entire staff for months at a time, illegal unpaid overtime, slashing wages between paychecks, working me into extreme injury from RSI and then subverting my ability to collect comp, firing me over "clerical errors" for trying to cancel a shift I didn't even mean to sign up for on a stupid new workforce app after my boss explicitly lying about my employment not being in jeopardy, etc, and all of the hardships I had to endure for leaving each of these jobs at my breaking point.
I am not sure why delivering 6 bags of groceries took over an hour in this case. It is entirely possible however that they made several other deliveries in between Wegmans and this location (making a $10 minimum for each). It is possible that this person actually made $50+ during this 69 minutes.
Source for more details of new policy: https://www.miamiherald.com/site-services/new-newsletters/bu...
So is not a typical scenario. I could put together an article just as misleading showing that Insticart pays a mint...
I don't like when people try to mislead me. Perhaps the fact that the tip is not going directly to the delivery person is offending some of your sensibilities. This is quite legal. Many states have done this for the past 80 years. I don't know how residents of states that practice this are surprised. All restaurants and other service industry locations you frequent do the same.
Being a food delivery person, a restaurant server or for that matter a McDonald's employee is not a skilled labor position and has never been a job someone should aspire to feed a family off of. We have people busting their butts, putting themselves through college, working their way up the ladder. We have 50k skilled labor jobs vacant in this country that pay a good wage and even offer training. People used to move across the country for these jobs. They used to leave their grandma's basement and go make something of themselves. Now we just have them making a bunch of noise over McDonald's not paying a Living Wage. Grow up. This world should not reward the lazy, it results in ever increasing mediocrity.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/25/605092520/high-pa...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2018/08/30/dirties...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/the-us-labor-shortage-is-rea...
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+us+has+vacant+skilled+la...
You place yourself in a weak position philosophically and argumentatively simply going for the old dumb bully method of personal attacks, character assassination, shouting someone down, insults ETC.
Is that really the best you can do? I pointed out inaccurate information and information gaps in this story. This claim reeks heavily and obviously of major bias. I wouldn't be surprised in an Instacart competitor actually is behind this. It's sad that others in this thread didn't already do the same. The group think and blind social justice here is really sad. There are many people here far smarter than I, yet they cannot see when such a weak and slanderous smear attempt is made?
If you want to change the labor laws to make tips and wage separate then go ahead. But just know that every restaurant and service company in states that allow this do it. If a certain business doesn't, they will have a hard time competing against the company across the street who does.
This 80 cents an hour case is so factually incorrect and lacking specifics that you and others should frankly be embarrassed to be making judgments based on it.
I worked these jobs while trying to support and educate myself so that I could get a better-paying job.
At the same time, if 6-8 hours a day of Instacart deliveries isn't enough to provide you with an apartment, tuition money and food & entertainment for a wife and two children, then it's a service that shouldn't exist and it is only propped up by investor cash.
Because that is what minimum wage was originally meant to provide for an individual in America, before nearly a century of propaganda and misdirection convinced people like you that someone on minimum wage is lazy and doesn't deserve enough money to eat healthily, rent a decent apartment and have enough cash for some entertainment, and generally live better than someone in a third-world country, much less afford something like an annual vacation or car payments.
So did many of us. People are not supposed to have to support a family as a primary earner on minimum wage and they never were. According to the 2013 Bureau of Labor Statistics, full time minimum wage earners earn over the poverty line by more than $3,000 per year. Two minimum wage earners can support a family of four and live above the poverty line. Avoiding poverty is all about choices.
>"At the same time, if 6-8 hours a day of Instacart deliveries isn't enough to provide you with an apartment, tuition money and food & entertainment for a wife and two children, then it's a service that shouldn't exist and it is only propped up by investor cash."
>"Because that is what minimum wage was originally meant to provide for an individual in America, before nearly a century of propaganda and misdirection convinced people like you that someone on minimum wage is lazy and doesn't deserve enough money to eat healthily, rent a decent apartment and have enough cash for some entertainment, and generally live better than someone in a third-world country, much less afford something like an annual vacation or car payments."
You have your facts quite wrong about the minimum wage and what it was originally meant to provide. The minimum wage was first enacted in 1938 by FDR. It paid a meager 25 cents per hour (this is $4 today when adjusted for inflation). So it has become substantially more generous as time has gone on. This is the opposite of your claim.
People in third-world countries earn less than a dollar a day. I'm sure they would love to earn even the 25 cents per hour that the original minimum wage paid.
Everyone I know that has been stuck in minimum wage jobs have definitely been lazy or made very poor choices (like stealing from their employer ETC.) in fact, only 3% of people above age 25 in the US make only the minimum wage.
Get the actual facts before making biased and factually incorrect claims (and cite sources when doing so). It really hurts your credibility to just make things up and try to sound like an expert so maybe no one will call you on it and you will appear to make a valid point.
Source: https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/
If you are a minor, the state will take care of you. If you are broke and not a minor, pass a GED, then get financial aid for a Junior College or Trade School. Join the military. Take one of these entry level skilled labor jobs, they train you for free and pay good (though you will probably have to move to another state). As you work there, put yourself though an online or local college (if you wish), or continue to work your way up in your trade.
I had another friend growing up that had a worse family situation then the first. He made good choices and took the opportunities that the other didn't. He stayed out of trouble with the law and others. He steered clear of drugs and alcohol. He is now upper middle class with a family and doing great. Life is hard, but in America,anyone with at least average intelligence can succeed.
Making laws based on emotions and feelings have got us nowhere in the last 80 years (in fact they have caused a lot of damage). It's because they proport that all those who start out less fortunate are victims and cannot succeed. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Look at all the government programs and affirmative action that have been made for African Americans over the last 80 years... Yet their poverty levels remain exactly the same. Why? We have created a culture of public assistance dependence and generations of "victims" with all the welfare. We have created a generation of fake achievers where employers have to wonder if a minority really excelled, or was just given a pass. Even some progressives are admitting to much of this finally (especially those arguing for a guaranteed basic income).
> If you were a minor, you would have been a ward of the state. They would have paid to take care of you. You wouldn't even have to work.
My experience with the State is that foster care where I grew up is the last place you want to be if you at all want a decent shot at a good future. We could talk about criminal indoctrination, institutionalization, lack of resources, lack of boundaries, lack of personal space and belongings, I mean really there are so many reasons why being a ward of the state fucking sucks.
> You could live, go to school, and get all your needs met for free.
In highschool, my mother didn't have a job. We were homeless at times. My sister tried very hard to stay in school but dropped out. My brother had the luxury of living with some extremely abusive relatives who fucked him up in the head and he dropped out as well. I took matters into my own hand and first worked hard to get accepted in a boarding school, and later when that didn't work out found a place to live, found a way to get to a job, and finished out high school. Getting an education was really important to me, and I did it despite an abusive, impovershed and malnourished childhood, despite my parents not being in my life or keeping jobs to help support me, despite a lot of things. And somehow you're finding a way to condemn me for it? How incredibly close-minded and judgemental of you.
> The life of a guy I grew up friends with reminds me of you and what you went through. He never listened to good advice and always ended up in bad situations.
Yes, GreenToad5, because we go way back as you know, and you know all about me. You know people that remind you of me, and you know that I never listen to good advice and always end up in bad situations. Just like your other friend, whom I'm not entirely inclined to believe you have made an accurate assessment of. Please, tell me all about my life and the mistakes you've seen me make. Pigeon-hole me some more with the handful of lazy shits you know.
> It is clear just by your demeanor and manipulation of facts that you have some challenges brought on by yourself.
This is literally delusional thinking. Nothing is clear based on what I wrote. I wrote two very vague and summarized posts about large portions of my life. You don't a single thing about any of the events I described except that they happened. It's insane to think you could derive anything else from that, even if you had a PhD in Psychology, which you obviously don't.
> If you are a minor, the state will take care of you. If you are broke and not a minor, pass a GED, then get financial aid for a Junior College or Trade School.
Again, I decided to get a job and work through highschool while homeless and parentless. And I passed high school with nearly a 4.0GPA and got a scholarship to every college I bothered applying to, with several full rides and paid-for state tuition. On track to actually do what I want to do, not settle for some stupid bargain job through a trade school, spending the rest of my working life doing something I don't like. As life would have it, a vindictive teacher illegally modified my final grade and refused to apply mandatory points that would still have passed me despite her modifications, and I failed a core class and had to forfeit all of my scholarships. Believe me, I was at the schoolboard, I was in the principal and guidance counselor's offices, I did not let it go--- and I was promised it woul...
In that case at least the staff get your tip. In this case Instacart is taking it for themselves.
Absolutely. Thought its definitely more pernicious to find out the restaurant owner was keeping the tips.
So you have incentive to report 0.0 tips. But then our manager at PizzaHut let go everyone who reported 0.0 tips (when asked why, he said they called customers to confirm we did receive tips).
And that's not only PizzaHut, that's everyone doing that, at least in NJ.
That would make some sense even. If a server doesn't get tips, that could be a sign that they are a bad server.
(Not agreeing with wage / tip theft, of course, but, as an employer, you need to be able to believe your employees.)
The tipped minimum is usually something like $2 vs the $7 minimum wage (these numbers are probably off now that so many places have raised the minimum wage to $10 or $12).
Since in this instacart case they ended up paying out $.80 an hour it’s below even tipped minimum wage standards, although I assume there’s some dodge about claiming the employees are contractors to get around paying wages.
I use Uber from time to time. Knowing full well that they have some practices I admonish. I use Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Safeway, etc. I try to be a better consumer with products but it doesn't always work.
I think we can approach this without the pitchforks and realize we all do this to some extent. The OP recognizes the problem and suggests they'll change their behavior. That's a win.
Parent - good luck moving off of the service. It's hard to swap something you've come to rely on out, and good on you for recognizing that as a consumer you need to make a change.
Thanks for clarifying. Good on you for taking an active approach to this and being thoughtful.
Also - I think this is where the power of the unionization comes into effect. While Unions can be a tremendous blocker of progress I feel that the pendulum has swung too far the against them.
why should it be?
ahh whaaat? mashes downvote button
since you are still reading, what is the exact thought process here, can you articulate this? So the service works and still provides a convenience for you, but is this action being masqueraded as the most effective way to get the company to change a policy amongst all other possible actions? Is it just to not "support" a company that does a single thing you disagree with? Is it something else?
I think there are more effective ways of bringing Instacart into compliance with your ideals. Isn't that a possibility?
edit: and no responses by time of writing while on the way to getting downvote censored. Be interesting to see if it flips when a different crowd gets off of work.
or to put it another way, I would say that an individual cancelling to telepathically convey their disagreement with a company is just as effective as an individual writing a sternly worded email
or even protesting on the street
The perspective of “rewarding thieves” is a perspective I asked for
Yet you wouldnt have even commented except for the meta downvoting mention. I dont even think you realize that the “first” downvoting complaint was part of the original post and wasnt a complaint, it was because people are predictable and maybe they would continue reading and contribute to the thread
If that doesn't work then of course I'm going to drop their service. I just believe that supporting worker led actions is the best way to push change at this very moment.
Seems like a not-bad approach.
Above? Not so much.
A lot of wait staff seem content to push mis-information: "If you tip poorly, the IRS makes us pay tax on it anyway, i.e. we're having to pay to serve you!"
No, the IRS makes an estimate on how much tipped workers are paid. If you document and it's less, then you pay tax on that. But using the IRS as the big bad wolf to get more tips that you know damn sure you're not going to report, doesn't make me the most sympathetic.
I've seen wait staff say that they believe 20% should be a baseline, for bad service, 25 for "decent" and 30% for good service...
Not quite the same, but perhaps it's a quid pro quo, of sorts. "Ups and downs in the economy, we won't come after you for earnings above the flat rate, but you will pay when lower". Which does negate my point, but such an agreement is consensual.
It doesn't seem to me that the IRS could just make "deals" with individual restaurants since congress has to actually legislate the internal revenue code. But I don't see anything when I search for what you describe.
where does this insanity stop? 50%? 100%? No matter how much you tip, people will grow to expect it as baseline, and then some more
Frankly tax fraud from people working for tips in the service sector should be among the very least of our worries as a society.
I have zero illusions that enough people understand the free market to be patient and allow for this to happen. We need to teach more economics in grade school.
Oh fuck off.
That comment embodies the absolute lowest morals; the stark reality of the very worst of capitalism.
"If they're so poor they have to pay just to eat my shit, well screw them."
Please take a good hard look at yourself.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, it's not clear to me, are the drivers told their comp for the job before accepting? Did this person know they would earn $0.80/hr?
Customer awareness is the free market solution to this, if that's the hammer you want to use to fix everything.
Maybe grade school should focus on reading comprehension.
You had a strong comment without the implied insult. Don't compromise your point to be mean to someone.
You can learn a lot from how companies feel about their practices by looking at how they train the customer support personnel with talking points to avoid admitting certain of them.
I'm going to leave you with a quote from Adam Smith who most would say founded the field of Economics.
> The interest of the dealers ... in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public... [They] have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public ... We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate ... It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/management/bu...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/01/18/686665609/epis...
Why don't you do something productive with your outrage, like changing your own lifestyle and keeping it to yourself? Or better yet, raise awareness without bullying someone else's attempt to process their frustration in an even-tempered way.
They are extremely likely to make another, more subtle bad call.
People who think this is OK can be very difficult to motivate.
If you are working a laborious job and you get cash tips, they go into your pocket. Full stop. To assert otherwise is to be simply unaware of the realities. No one scraping by with cash tips is summing them for their 1040. No one.
I don't think that supporting tax evasion should be a primary reason for tipping in cash.
But there are other reasons why tipping in cash is a good idea, such as making sure that the money actually goes to the worker, and knowing that they'll have immediate access to it, rather than having to wait until their next paycheck.
I think this a danger of contracting for VC-backed "gig economy" services like Instacart and Uber. They often subsidize the cost of the service using funding (billions, in the case of Instacart and Uber) in order to quickly attract customers and workers, then reduce the subsidies once they are established.
It's not right, but at this point gig economy workers should expect it and plan accordingly.
Now it seems they skip items, replace it without asking and the earliest delivery is tomorrow. And the produce has a lot to be desired. It'll last two days and already looks crappy on delivery. I think they are in such a rush they just grab whatever.
The best thing for any app service, keep 20 in singles and just tip cash. I honestly don't know how the app tipping works but I have a feeling the full amount isn't going to the person.
Do the right thing. Take a stand for human decency and make a compromise by closing your instacart account now. Absorb the inconvenience and do your own shopping. And make sure to tell instacart to (insert profanity of choice) if you can while closing your account. That behaviour is low down and dirty. Shady craigs list used car dealer level stuff.
I just walked three blocks in the rain to the local grocery store to pick up stuff to make dinner and food for tomorrow. Not like I was jumping for joy and made a dash for the door. I didn't want to, but I did. That's life.
It's also possible that instacart will lose money on the sales where they can't scam tips; that means you can use the service and pay the worker well and punish instacart and increase the incentive for them to change their policy.
Or we can just make it very clear that companies that engage in outright wage theft should be put out of business, so no other business ever tries it in the future.
I'm all for bringing a legal hammer down on them! I'm just saying that as far as personal action goes, getting them to lose money while their worker gets a healthy wage is better than a boycott.
Using Instacart is a luxury in the first place, but having everyone close their account only hurts the very people you seem to be for. In case you missed it in the article, there is a workaround so that your tips are correctly considered, or you can always pay cash: http://www.workingwa.org/22cents
This is redundant. You are making a general argument here against making decisions based on your own morality.
Same arguments were used to suppose slavery. If we make slavery illegal, where will slaves work apart from cotton farms?
There are other jobs to do, it doesn't mean we have to allow blatant injustice to go on, in exchange for profits. All the while using a moral arguments to justify it.
Frankly I don't care about this company but equating this to slavery just comes across as more of the same virtue signaling.
I haven't used Instacart since then.
https://notipdoordash.com/
I've tipped a lot on Doordash. I feel ripped off.
My company regularly used Doordash for years and made a point of tipping on orders. Crazy.
I tried to find a way to close the account but there does not seem to be one.
I wish I had thought to ask for a refund of tips too, but I already sent my support request.
If you want to blame someone, I suggest looking for the actual culprit and not a law-abiding company. This has little to do with Instacart and everything to do with state wage laws.
(1) Tips are expected in the restaurant industry
(2) Waitstaff knows what they're signing up for
(3) The restaurant does not adjust wages after tips have been received
In many cases they do. If you receive zero tips for a shift, they are obligated to pay out minimum wage. If you receive $200 in tips for a shift, they pay out a lower figure, usually around $2.
The people delivering here are "contractors", not employees, so this doesn't actually apply to them; what Instacart is doing here is merely reprehensible, as opposed to illegal.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
It is, of course, entirely possible that the worker in question is not on the west coast, but Instacart is still welcome to pay a fair wage even if not required to by law, and Instacart should certainly avoid lying about their business practices either way (from the article: "Even Instacart seems to know how messed up it is to pay workers less when they get tipped more — which is why they’ve denied the practice when speaking to reporters at Business Insider & the Miami Herald.")
The receipt was for a store named Wegmans. Those stores are located on the East coast (New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey).
It may be legal for instacart to take the tip money but it’s their decision to do so and they deserve the blame.
It’s wrong because the people paying the tip generally believe it goes to the person providing the service, not to the company. And it subverts the purpose, which is to incent and reward good personal service.
So the company ends up screwing their workers, deceiving their customers and disincentizing good service.
Legal, but wrong and stupid.
One super annoying thing about this system and people choosing not to tip is a situation like this, assume a waiter is serving two customers in an hour, the local minimum wage is $9/hr and the sub-minimum wage is $3/hr, the first customer tips $4 dollars, yielding a potential wage excess of $2 (assuming a reliable rate) when the second customer tips $0 then the waiter ends up making no money beyond minimum wage. So if you're a tipper another customer that doesn't tip can cancel out your tip.
I'm not certain how these are aggregated from an accounting perspective, but I wouldn't be surprised if the window was either a full day or a pay period (in the latter case, every two weeks someone totals $3 * hrs worked, adds on total tips and verifies if that number is above $9 * hrs worked (do nothing) or is below (make up the difference out of the employer's pocket.
Instacart has 1.9b in funding, if they are stealing from their workers, it only means that their business model is broken.. or we as consumers can fall into this dishonest game and normalize it.
Thats a big assumption that is demonstrably untrue in many specific cases.
People are harassed for not tipping. People look down on you for not tipping. Even, for bad service, we still have to tip.
Honestly, in the general case, I don't understand how anyone can manage to live on minimum wage, unless they live in a barracks, their mother's basement, or under a bridge.
Bu continuing to tip, you indirectly hurt workers.
Right, because most service workers have a plethora of options, right? Tipping is a social construct that I'm fine with. I'm also open to the argument against it. I don't think it should give employers a pass on paying minimum wage.
The reality is that you are never going to convince enough people to stop tipping and, even if you did, you'd simply drive down the wages of people who already don't make much money.
If you remove some of the tips (not everyone will take part as you said), employers WILL have to adjust for it in order to reach a new equilibrium, or start losing workers.
You speak of helping the workers, but you know what; they love the tip system. They make far more on tips than they would others. If you think Chili's is going to pay waiters 35k and bartenders 45k you're crazy.
By in the short-term propping up those employees, we reduce the overall pressures to improve their conditions / negotiate better wages, and we've somehow managed to shift the blame from the employer to the employees and customers/students.
Not how it works, unfortunately.
In reality, the system in the US is what it is because of the mostly random process of cultural development.
Changing cultural norms is not easy in any society, even if you have good logical arguments against them.
It doesn't work that way either, but that's the rationale.
Forcing people to tip to ensure people get paid enough money is a consequence of the system, not the reasoning why the system is implemented.
A more interesting and useful comparison would be to poll individuals who have held similar service industry jobs in countries that do and do not have tipping cultures, and ask them which they preferred and why.
And/or a craven attempt by employers to further deflect any responsibility for responsibility for paying their employees. I noticed that the Curb app bumped the default tip rate to 25% at some point. I'm guessing that's somehow, directly or indirectly, leading to them or taxi companies getting to keep a larger cut of the fares.
Tipping really is a method for the employer to hold onto as much money as possible at the expense of staff.
So it sounds like it is absolutely used as a bad way to supplement wages.
>It doesn't work that way either, but that's the rationale.
Indeed. The on the ground reality is that tipping does not serve this purpose. I don't know if it ever did, to be frank. Studies[0] generally show little to no correlation between performance and amount tipped.
And the reality is that tipping is the reason invoked in many state laws for paying restaurant workers less than minimum wage. Tipping is the reason they get paid poorly, and I always find it problematic that people invoke tipping as a way to help people, when it is the cause of their low wages. In those states, tipping is a big win for the restaurant owner. The customer pays more money out of his/her pocket, and the waiter often does not get much money.
Unlike others, though, I do not consider this wage theft (even at a moral level). We don't tip for many other services that we receive, and the problem of how those workers are compensated doesn't cross our mind. Why do we insist that tipping some category of workers has a moral component whereas others do not? Fixing those laws will be a challenge as long as tipping is commonplace.
[0] Example: https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
(Taking off my pink hat)
(Yes, I do contribute to their poor wages by tipping. Have to conform somewhat to society!)
Service disrupted because bus driver/garbage collector / teacher/hotel employee strike? How dare those selfish underpaid and overworked peasants stand up for reasonable hours! They should consider themselves lucky they have a job at all! (It should be: how dare the corporations or federal agencies pay so little to their employees that their only recourse was to risk their livelihood by walking off the job)
How about that case where the teacher used her health insurance to pay for an impoverished student's pills? She committed insurance fraud, she's just raising rates for everyone else! (Never mind that rates will be as high as an insurance company can legally get away with in this insane profit driven healthcare industry)
Or the housing crisis. Stupid proletariat, taking loans they knew they couldn't afford! Why didn't they educate themselves? (Instead of 1. Why weren't banks doing due diligence 2. Why were banks allowed to not do due diligence 3. Why the fuck don't they teach us basic financial skills in elementary school?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is absolutely fucking hilarious.
I swear someone who is not from the US is going to quote your throwaway account as being gospel about how things are changing in the US.
Thank your for making my day brighter with your humor.
You have to skim every penny from the bottom to sit on top.
#bezosDidIt
#gatesDidIt
#jobsDidIt
Nothing new
My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0]
Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money it generates. There are legal expectations around how the money goes from the customer to the worker.
[0] https://www.ramoslaw.com/is-your-employer-committing-wage-th...
[edit] Added "not"
I think this sentence says the opposite of what you intended it to.
That having been said, the concept of defining contractor wages in relation to customer tips is new to me. I could see a legal argument being made in the employer's favor if the worker gave due consent to the transaction.
The idea here would be: Instacart states somewhere on the order prior to pickup 'if you choose to accept this order, you will receive $10, of which $.80 will come from us.' Since the delivery worker isn't running a 'shift' as an 'employee,' but just coincidentally happens to be running Instacart orders for 10 hours straight, this counts as one of many transactions that they've accepted and hence waived the legal right to complain about.
If this legal fiction sounds absurd to you, you're not alone.
Edit: welp, even that says it 100% goes to the person doing the shopping. Gross.
Welcome to the world of 'tipped wages'. In my state, every paycheck, the first $520 worth of tips effectively goes straight to your employer for the purposes of paying your minimum wage and then you can have whatever is left over.
Only Instacart believes this.
But boy I’d love to dis-enshrine it.
That's simple fraud. It's like going door to door collecting money for a charity and then just pocketing the money. Potentially Instacart will need to refund those 'tips'
The strange thing about this is that it may actually be fraud against the people buying from instacart. The ones giving the tip. I'm curious then what kind of damages a customer could sue for beyond the amount of the tip. And I'm also curious if instacarts TOS for customers forces arbitration and prevents class action lawsuits.
This should be interesting to watch unfold.
Suppose that we decide to call dogs cats. In that case, what is a domesticated canine? Answer: it’s a dog, whatever you choose to call it.
(Pretty sure I butchered that, but hopefully the point still came through.)
But I have never worked in a restaurant so I could be completely wrong.
The problem is that they use the tip as an excuse to pay basically nothing. It's not acting like a real tip.
There is, because the pay can't go negative.
> The legal system is not staffed by robots, either. I don't see how they can defend a class action regardless of what words they've written on a TOS.
It depends on what the lawsuit is for. Normally we have things like "minimum wage" but those don't apply if you manage to convince everyone it's a contractor situation. If they can be classified as employees then there's all sorts of lovely anti-tip-taking law. But that's a big if. And I don't think contractors have tip laws? It's not generally illegal to say one thing about how your company allocates money coming in and then do another.
I feel like for someone somewhere in the attorney general's office, prosecuting these should be someone's full time tax paid job.
> DoorDash, which launched in 2014, services 15 metro areas in the U.S.; like many other delivery apps, it employs couriers to pick up food from restaurants and deliver it to customers. But beyond the usual delivery fees, taxes, and tips customers will shell out for, DoorDash also inflates the cost of each menu item — often unbeknownst to customers. For example, a sandwich that costs $10.99 directly from a restaurant might be listed as $14.95 on DoorDash, and the app gives customers no indication they're being upcharged. As Bloomberg notes, "Other delivery apps, such as Postmates and Square Inc.'s Caviar, typically list the same prices as those on the restaurants' menus."
https://www.eater.com/2016/3/18/11261548/doordash-delivery-s...
multiple requests asking them to at least fix this info or take me off the platform altogether (because customers were starting to wonder why my prices were so low on doordash - they're not, the couriers paid the current amount in-store...) and they ignored me. it wasn't until i signed up to be contacted about being a restaurant partner that they finally paid attention.
of course, once i registered interest in partnering with doordash, they spammed me with requests to sign the terribly lopsided agreement, and then took my restaurant off as a "bargaining" chip. yeah, okay. works for me.
so, tl;dr, if a restaurant isn't directly partnered with doordash, they can do whatever the heck they want with the prices.
(which, speaking of restaurants setting prices, they all definitely have clauses in there about not charging more than you would on other services. they definitely let you upcharge... i was half tempted to put up burgers for $20 each, for real...)
27.35 - actual face value of food (same as the in-store menu, at least for this restaurant) 2.32 - Tax 1.30 - "Healthy SF fee" 2.00 - Courier Bonus 4.92 - "Service Fee" (huh?) 1.99 - "Delivery Fee"
But does anyone else find it obnoxious that all these digital services exist, often starting out with no tip straight pricing, then tipping re-appears, and then you suddenly need physical cash to morally use the service at all?
Obviously workers should get fairly compensated. The problem is tipping culture itself, just set a price that customers are willing to pay and workers can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.
Plus the whole tipping thing is extremely inconsistent. Floral delivery? No tip. Pizza delivery? Tip. Some brands support credit card tipping, others don't, and even the ones that do you have to research how much using it hurts the employee...
The US needs law changes that outlaw tipping. It will be culturally painful while we adapt but once we do both workers and customers will be better for it.
No, it just needs to not treat workers that might receive tips differently: they should have he same minimum wages as other workers and tips should not count as compensation by the employer satisfying minimum wage mandates.
Private employers might then wish to prohibit employees accepting tips (since it no longer benefits the employer as it does now for the worker to be classes as “tipped”), for similar reasons to those for which public employers already do.
EDIT: And we need better enforcement (and possibly slight changes to the basic rules) against mischaracterization of employees as contractors, which is most of the problem in this case.
Now they're getting minimum wage and I still feel the need to tip. That doesn't fix the problem unless we also make major changes to the minimum wage.
> Private employers might then wish to prohibit employees accepting tips (since it no longer benefits the employer as it does now for the worker to be classes as “tipped”), for similar reasons to those for which public employers already do.
They wouldn't do that at minimum wage, and they get negative value out of a combined pay-more/anti-tip policy.
I don't think it's enough to fix the problems with tipping culture.
I'm not sure that your dislike of your own sense of obligation is sufficient cause for a legal prohibition on tipping. I think you should be free to tip (though employers should likewise be free to prohibit employees from accepting tips, and should have fewer reasons not to do so than they currently do.)
OTOH, I would get behind (and meant to include this before) prohibiting employers from taking, offsetting, or redirecting tips, including directing employees in a sharing regime; requiring tips, if given and accepted (employers would be permitted to prohibir the latter as a condition of employment, so long as the policy was uniform) to be property of the recieving employee independent of the employer. Basically, they are now a dodge around sales taxes for many employers, but effectively still revenue that the employer controls, within some limits, which gives employers a big reason to protect tipping culture.
The sense of “sense of obligation” in play when one says “I feel the need to tip”, as I would have thought was obvious by the quoted bit I responded to.
> If it is obligatory then it definitely should be outlawed
It is not actually obligatory (except where it is advertised as required, in which case there is no false advertising), even if some people have a sense of obligation which demands tipping.
Tipping law for the most part isn't changing largely because tipped workers make more money under the status quo. For those familiar with the restaurant industry, tons of folks turn down management roles because they pay less than working the floor.
Let's face it. People tip the Dominoes guy so they don't get spit in their pizza the next time.
The way they keep working to create opaqueness around their tipping to the point that last year Drivers were handing out pamphlets explaining how to remove the "Service Fee" (which nobody but Instacart gets) to tip the drivers was a huge red flag. Removing the service fee was on a 2nd page you had to go to and by default I believe was 10% of your order. If you've never used Instacart the groceries in my experience have been quite a bit more expensive than they'd be in stores so they're making revenue on that end already.
I started using them a bit again this year and now there's only a "Driver Tip" section with I believe a hard locked in service fee. Does the shopper get the tip as well? Is the driver the shopper as well now? In my situation the shopper is doing FAR more work than the driver. I want to tip the people well because I know Instacart doesn't pay well, but I don't want to give a $26 tip for $130 in groceries (which is usually 3-4 bags) going to the person who only spent 10 minutes in a car to drop my groceries off at my front door (and Instacart drivers never read the Delivery notes, I've had to walk out and walk them over to me each time last year that I ordered).
Is the tip split between the shopper and the driver? It only says "Driver Tip".
Everything just seems to be disgustingly opaque with this company and I really do not feel right even using it anymore so I've used it incredibly sparingly (maybe 3 times last year) as of late.
edit: I just checked, there's an info icon and it says 100% of the tip goes to the driver. So should I not tip based on the entire process of shopping and delivery? I don't even want to use this app anymore because I shouldn't have to stop and waste time considering these things.
This company just screams deceptive to me. Guess I'll be done with it.
According to the screenshot of Instacart's email, they confirmed this is accurate and was most definitely not a mistake. And according to the article, Instacart has doubled-down instead of apologizing.
I am most certainly putting wear and tear on my vehicle any time I start it up, including for going to the grocery store to shop.
Why start tipping for outstanding service, instead of setting the floor at $0 for 0 service?
Answer: because people like to pay less for stuff and let the company eat the blame.
Additionally, I refuse (on basic principle) to eat at any restaurant where I haven't mapped out their entire supply infrastructure. I made myself an app that keeps track of how much I spend at each of these restaurants in any given month and then I tip each entity a healthy percent (20% being the minimum because really if you can't afford 20% you can't afford to eat out). Currently, I'm tipping the truck drivers that deliver supplies, the factory workers who prepare the frozen food, the farmers, the accountants, the HR department, and the people who do road maintenance on the streets that all of the above use to get to work.
... You know now that I'm talking about it. I don't think I tip stockholders of C-Corps. I did consider S-Corp stockholders and decided that they probably shouldn't get a tip, but C-Corps stockholders are kind of part of a financial supply chain if you think about it.
Now that we're on the topic, can anything think of anyone else I'm leaving out? I wouldn't want to ignore the hard work of the people who make my daily life possible.
Whats happening here is that companies have figured out they can just extract value out of a subset of their employees and pass the cost onto their customers by manipulating social norms.
If I'm paying the worker directly they should be treated like a contractor, but the companies want the control of hiring an employee and the responsibilities of hiring a contractor
Got those lovely nuggets? Buy there again, tell their manager how great the service was, and be a great customer. Also, treat better the next person you interact with, don't just offset your morale to paying some dollars and then be an asshe...
Imagine a widget where every link in the supply chain is paid proportionately, instead of each layer trying to skim what they can. If a salesperson sells the product for 10% more, they get 10% more commission - and the distributor gets 10%, and the manufacturer, and the producer of the raw materials, and the transportation provider, and...
I don't know if it would actually be used, but if you wanted to do something like this, a blockchain would make a good deal of sense; especially if payment for the finished product was made through the same mechanism.
If the menu says friend potato, why am I paying separately for it to be fried?
Why's Instacart getting the unique bad press?
Just pay your workers minimum wages at least and make tipping optional.
I shouldn't have to tip the "employees" just because a company can get away without paying even minimum wage to its "employees".
There is something seriously broken with the whole tipping thing.