In today's atrocity from the gig economy,
DoorDash has an...interesting interpretation of how tips work:
On my first DoorDash shift, a lunch run in Brooklyn, I learned about the company’s interesting tipping policy.
DoorDash offers a guaranteed minimum for each job. For my first order, the guarantee was $6.85 and the customer, a woman in Boerum Hill who answered the door in a colorful bathrobe, tipped $3 via the app. But I still received only $6.85.
Here’s how it works: If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero, DoorDash would have paid me the whole $6.85. Because she tipped $3, DoorDash kicked in only $3.85. She was saving DoorDash $3, not tipping me.
There are two lessons to be had here. One,
tip in cash. Two, the gig economy is built on extracting wealth from the workers in it and pushing it up to the 0.1%, of which this atrocity is just the latest example. And the sad part is that this isn't even the most egregious example of gig economy shittiness (we could do an entire thread titled "
Fuck Postmates" for a dive into how horrible the gig economy can be.)
The gig economy is a blight on our economy, abusing workers to benefit only a few at the top.
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Many people find themselves both exploited by but dependent on the gig economy. I personally am dating a woman who drives for Uber to make ends meet in addition to her tech support job.
Doordash being the bottom of the barrel and their tipping practice is nothing new, but it is emblemic of how the gig economy companies screw eberyone they can for every dollar.
For some people they don't have much other choice (or at least that's what they believe for whatever reason).
Pretty much - it's a topic that's out of scope for the Uber thread (while there's crossover, the problems with Uber go beyond their gig economy issues.) The gig economy pretends to be a way to make money while "being your own boss", but winds up being the modern version of "piece work" - but it's got a gamified app, so it's cool and modern instead of just another incarnation of long hated abusive systems. Furthermore, as reality has sunk in for many gig economy companies, their response has been to balance their books on the back of their workers - such as DoorDash stealing the tips from their workers.
It's an abusive system all the way down, but since it's part of the Silicon Valley bubble, everyone's supposed to not notice this.
.... isn't that a good thing? like if you get a garbage tipper, we will ensure you get what we guaranteed?
that seems good!
I had a mental breakdown and lost my good job of 15 + years. This is all I can do to barely scrape by. I'm in an area where I make about $70 a night and spend $30 for gas.
No. DoorDash should be paying the rider the guarantee and the tip.
What you are describing is a wage. What happens is the customer tries to tip the driver, but ends up tipping the huge corporation instead. Who don't mention this to the customer of course.
i.e. If I was told I would be paid a fixed total of $10 for delivering food regardless of whether I was tipped or not, I would expect to paid no more or less than $10
if that was not communicated to me, than yes, there would be a problem.
edited for clarity (hopefully)
people have cash?
Or just the tip, as they did before the change. The NBC article that reported on this had quotes from drivers saying that their income immediately fell significantly when Instacart or Doordash rolled out these policies.
It sounds like a good thing until you realize that the guaranteed amount now is too small. In the system you're thinking about, the guarantee amount G would be equal to the minimum tip M plus the old system fee F.
So in the old system, if the customer doesn't tip, the gig worker receives only F, which sucks. But if the customer tips $10, they get F plus 10.
In your hypothetical, the gig worker would get G if they tipped nothing, but F plus 10 if the customer tipped $10. A simple, good thing for the company to do. Just a minimum tip program. It's not what hedgie is demanding, a straight increase in F, so you get G plus 10 when they tip $10, but it's better than what they had, and it's what the policy sounds like when the company describes it.
What they actually did is dramatically reduce F, so the amount they subtract from every big tip is bigger than what they put in if there's no tip. So you make G instead of F if you don't get tipped, but you get F plus seven, or something, on the ten dollar tip. It's what you thought plus a secret pay cut, combined to be confusing.
Think of it like you used to get $7 plus any tip, and now you get $10 plus anything the customer tips over $6. If people were mostly tipping over $3 anyway, you're getting paid less, the customer is getting charged the same, and the company is making more money on tips of $4 or $5. And $4 is the default.
I made all these numbers up, of course
For the consumer you'd expect that the $4 tip you put into the app would be going to the driver, but it's not.
I've never heard of or used door dash, so I didn't realize it used to be different and had changed
Yeah, the issue here seems to be (assuming that it was properly communicated to the driver) that this isn't a bad thing for the gig worker/company relationship. Its a bad thing for the customer/company relationship. Because the person thought they were tipping the Door Dasher, and the Door Dasher has been told that they won't be getting any tips.
Uber and Lyft give 100% of the tips to the driver, and I believe also guarantee a minimum price for the work done per mile and per hour.
Right, not only do I want the driver to make as much as possible, I want the company to receive as little as possible :😡
Or tip with cash, cause door dash can't do shit about that yet.
I guess the thing that makes me most mad, is since most people probably previously tipped with the app, DD knew the exact amount to set the basic fee at to extract the maximum amount of money from the system. As above, anything below $7 means you are just paying some of it instead of DD paying. At ~7 you are paying all of it, DD is just pocketing the service fee. And the number of people who are tipping above $7 are rare enough that it would cost more to offer more than that as a basic fee.
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I use DoorDash more than the other delivery services and I have to say there's probably a 30% chance that my food shows up SUPER late or the wrong order. Most times it's because the driver has taken more than one order at a time and is running from restaurant to restaurant to house to house. It's insane.
The way tips are implemented is way obsolete, so it's easier than ever for employers or pseudo-employers to abuse it. And it's hard to advocate for legislation that protects tips, because that may drive us further away from actually paying people who survive on tips a decent wage. So I guess it's up to us to upgrade tip tech to either make sense or go ahead and take this opportunity to tear tips down.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
And then there is the website spoofing:
That is flagrant trademark violation, isn't it? I can't believe a legal department would ever sign off on that.
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The motto of a ton of these Silicon Valley startups is "Move fast and break shit they can't stop us all"
Yeah, but once you've "made it" more or less I think you're supposed to dial it back instead of double down, because now you have assets worth suing over.
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I heard of it grughub and uber eats but the places that offer it I can walk to within reason from my house. It's why I don't use them. But I have heard it's a handful of people in town {5 to 10 for the whole of ABQ metro} doing it so it's chaos
No. But it is fraud.
*Looks around*
I don't think that has happened yet.
...maybe Microsoft and Nvidia but those are basically the only two that I know of.
The entire practice literally invalidates the idea of tipping too. The driver is getting paid the exact same regardless of service rendered. The tip is literally just a self-imposed tax paid to the delivery service. And they are scamming you into doing it by disguising it as a piece of culturally-pressured behaviour.
It would be better for the drivers, since $0 isnt attrractive.
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Funny enough once you have money it's a lot harder to sue you because you can hold your own in court without being bled of all your money over the course of legal fuckery.
Turns out it's just to poor people that suing really is much of a threat
Eh, if they're doing it to a chain that's irrelevant. Corporate lawyers.
Edit: Though I guess chains are probably running their own deliveries... I suppose they could run afoul of an AG doing it though.
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