Just as a side note to this discussion, I'm semi-retired and I do the set of food delivery gig jobs (Doordash, Ubereats, Skip the Dishes) to get myself out and about, and earn a few extra dollars. I don't support myself via these apps and mainly do it because I like driving and going places, so I'm not offering any moral opinions on what they do, just clearing up a few things from a driver's perspective.
Some of these places do the "We pay you a delivery fee based on distance + whatever the customer tips you", versus Doordash's "We will pay you X amount to deliver, all included". And, honestly, I prefer Doordash's method simply because it actually results in more pay on average than the other system (people are super cheap on average when they use a delivery app versus paying in cash).
Doordash doesn't shout out that they're using tips to subsidize (though they don't take a lot of steps to hide it from the driver either, the breakdown of where the money came from that you got paid for the delivery is right in the app), but they also don't mislead you by saying "We'll pay you the guaranteed amount plus tips" -- its clearly stated up front that the guaranteed amount includes any tips.
(Though, for the person that used the $20 tip as an example, you get pay over the guaranteed rate when that happens. Basically, the first $7 or so of the tip goes into the Doordash pot, and then the rest goes to the driver upon completion of the delivery. But they never mention over rate guarantees at any point during the orientation process, and it rarely happens anyway.)
I know that as a customer, I'd be a bit ticked if I thought my tip was going to the delivery person on top of their pay, but it was actually just letting the company get out of paying them part of their agreed upon compensation.
Again, depending on state that's how it always works with tips.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Just as a side note to this discussion, I'm semi-retired and I do the set of food delivery gig jobs (Doordash, Ubereats, Skip the Dishes) to get myself out and about, and earn a few extra dollars. I don't support myself via these apps and mainly do it because I like driving and going places, so I'm not offering any moral opinions on what they do, just clearing up a few things from a driver's perspective.
Some of these places do the "We pay you a delivery fee based on distance + whatever the customer tips you", versus Doordash's "We will pay you X amount to deliver, all included". And, honestly, I prefer Doordash's method simply because it actually results in more pay on average than the other system (people are super cheap on average when they use a delivery app versus paying in cash).
Doordash doesn't shout out that they're using tips to subsidize (though they don't take a lot of steps to hide it from the driver either, the breakdown of where the money came from that you got paid for the delivery is right in the app), but they also don't mislead you by saying "We'll pay you the guaranteed amount plus tips" -- its clearly stated up front that the guaranteed amount includes any tips.
(Though, for the person that used the $20 tip as an example, you get pay over the guaranteed rate when that happens. Basically, the first $7 or so of the tip goes into the Doordash pot, and then the rest goes to the driver upon completion of the delivery. But they never mention over rate guarantees at any point during the orientation process, and it rarely happens anyway.)
I know that as a customer, I'd be a bit ticked if I thought my tip was going to the delivery person on top of their pay, but it was actually just letting the company get out of paying them part of their agreed upon compensation.
Again, depending on state that's how it always works with tips.
Hmm.
How about:
Tipify
- Is an overlay that sits over your gig apps.
- You place an order, Tipify intercepts it, places the order for you, but with the minimum tip.
- Tipify app on the delivery guys side syncs with your Tipify order, as does the restaurant.
- Restaurant menu is displayed unaltered in the customer's Tipify app, along with the savings if you hadn't ordered with the other app, but instead gone to the restaurant.
- Can tip directly to the delivery guy through Tipify, bypassing the other app.
- Clearly denoted 1% of Tips goes to sustaining the app, shown before Tip is sent.
Most of the bigger gig economy apps aren't stealing tips. Uber and Lyft aren't. So this app would be strictly worse for the workers in most situations.
Amazon Flex pioneered this? I don't know if flex drivers are as big as other driving apps, but the big companies definitely started this trend
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
Or health insurance company evil, at the minimum. Cause they do a lot of the same stuff, except also kill people to save money.
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
"There are more companies/industries who are also screwing over workers, and it's been happening for a while", is absolutely not a good excuse.
I would absolutely wager that most people tipping delivery people and waitstaff don't realize this.
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
"There are more companies/industries who are also screwing over workers, and it's been happening for a while", is absolutely not a good excuse.
I would absolutely wager that most people tipping delivery people and waitstaff don't realize this.
Yeah but you can't claim that Silicon Valley is the new Mordor source of all of capitalism evils when they are just doing what everyone else has always been doing.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I have no doubt that Doordash is doing it to try to save money. But, I should note that the results aren't entirely all bad.
Since I'm not really doing this for the cash, I don't tend to decline a lot of deliveries even if they're going to lower class areas (hey -- I don't go to them normally, and they're almost always for families, anyway). When I'm driving for Skip (which is pure distance + whatever tip), I will notice that a lot of the time when I get to a restaurant for an order that's going to a "less nice" neighborhood, I get a lot of "Where the fuck where you? This order has been sitting for an hour!" complaints. Now, I only get the orders within 5-10 minutes or so of me arriving, so that means the order got passed by a -lot- of drivers before it came to me. And that's because low/no tip plus shady neighborhood equals long waits and bad service.
When I deliver for Doordash, that's much more rare. If you're getting paid equally well to go a higher or lower end area, then there's not nearly so much disparity in service. And a lot of the families are pretty relieved to hear when I tell them to save their money on the tip -- their tips get subsidized by the higher end clientele anyway.
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
"There are more companies/industries who are also screwing over workers, and it's been happening for a while", is absolutely not a good excuse.
I would absolutely wager that most people tipping delivery people and waitstaff don't realize this.
Yeah but you can't claim that Silicon Valley is the new Mordor source of all of capitalism evils when they are just doing what everyone else has always been doing.
Except that a lot of these Silicon Valley/gig economy jobs find ways to skirt around minimum wage laws, as well as a number of other worker protection laws, in addition to any old school mistreatment.
Edit: As well, maybe this is a good chance to shine a light on some shitty business practices that have been allowed to go on for far too long.
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
"There are more companies/industries who are also screwing over workers, and it's been happening for a while", is absolutely not a good excuse.
Of course not. I’m not defending this practice. I’m decidedly anti-tip, in any and all contexts. I tip only because social norms require it and because compensation for tipped employees is set under the assumption that I’ll follow those norms.
I just think it’s important to keep this in perspective. Because for some reason most people think about these things this way when they click the tip button on the DoorDash app but the same reaction isn’t triggered when they write a tip in on their Applebee’s receipt.
For some reason “DoorDash drivers treated the exact same way as literally millions of other tipped employees” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
Just as a side note to this discussion, I'm semi-retired and I do the set of food delivery gig jobs (Doordash, Ubereats, Skip the Dishes) to get myself out and about, and earn a few extra dollars. I don't support myself via these apps and mainly do it because I like driving and going places, so I'm not offering any moral opinions on what they do, just clearing up a few things from a driver's perspective.
Some of these places do the "We pay you a delivery fee based on distance + whatever the customer tips you", versus Doordash's "We will pay you X amount to deliver, all included". And, honestly, I prefer Doordash's method simply because it actually results in more pay on average than the other system (people are super cheap on average when they use a delivery app versus paying in cash).
Doordash doesn't shout out that they're using tips to subsidize (though they don't take a lot of steps to hide it from the driver either, the breakdown of where the money came from that you got paid for the delivery is right in the app), but they also don't mislead you by saying "We'll pay you the guaranteed amount plus tips" -- its clearly stated up front that the guaranteed amount includes any tips.
(Though, for the person that used the $20 tip as an example, you get pay over the guaranteed rate when that happens. Basically, the first $7 or so of the tip goes into the Doordash pot, and then the rest goes to the driver upon completion of the delivery. But they never mention over rate guarantees at any point during the orientation process, and it rarely happens anyway.)
I know that as a customer, I'd be a bit ticked if I thought my tip was going to the delivery person on top of their pay, but it was actually just letting the company get out of paying them part of their agreed upon compensation.
Again, depending on state that's how it always works with tips.
yeah that's also theft, is the thing
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Whether or not this is worse for workers depends entirely on what the amounts for payment and average tip are.
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
You are conflating tip credit with what doordash is doing, which is inaccurate. Tip credit allows folks to pay less than the minimum wage, but not in an adjustable rate relative to their tips earned. Under tip credit I may only make $5 an hour in my state, less than minimum, but anything I make in tips are mine and mine alone. If my restaurant wanted to pool tips for the whole house, they would not be eligible to operate on Tip credit and I would have to make minimum wage and get a cut of the tip pool.
Doordash is running, essentially, a pooled tip, only the pool doesn't include the driver (which is already on sketchy ground with labor laws) or really anyone but the company as a whole. Not only that, but Doordash isn't paying minimum wage. They are getting the corporate benefits of both Tip Credit and Tip Pooling without paying any of it out.
And were it not for the gig economy functionality, if they were a restaurant they would be open to one hell of a class action lawsuit.
The agreed upon compensation of a DoorDash employee (or, rather, contractor) is $1 plus tip or $X (the guarantee, $6.83 in the OP’s example)...whichever is more. Nobody is ever losing any “agreed upon compensation.”
Same way a server’s agreed upon compensation is $2.13 an hour plus tip, or $7.25 an hour. Whichever is more.
In both situations the customer is paying the company, not the employer, the difference between those two numbers every time they tip.
I don't really think anyone here is on board with tipping in general, let alone doordash throwing their hands up and going "but that's how tips work!"
Yeah tipping is awful to begin with, not a good defense for this behavior for delivery drivers, sorry.
The fun thing is, does this tip mechanic implicitly define doordash workers as employees then, instead of independent contractors like with what uber does? If they're not employees, stealing the tip to balance it and adjust to the wage might be illegal in a lot of states. But not having proper W4/W2s set up might also be illegal too eh?
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I don't really think anyone here is on board with tipping in general, let alone doordash throwing their hands up and going "but that's how tips work!"
Yeah tipping is awful to begin with, not a good defense for this behavior for delivery drivers, sorry.
The fun thing is, does this tip mechanic implicitly define doordash workers as employees then, instead of independent contractors like with what uber does? If they're not employees, stealing the tip to balance it and adjust to the wage might be illegal in a lot of states. But not having proper W4/W2s set up might also be illegal too eh?
I would wager that, for legal purposes, DoorDash pays $1 per delivery, flat. That is the agreed upon rate for the delivery.
Any “guarantee” incentive paid out above that is a separate item, and can be reduced for tips received in the system.
Because again, they aren’t “stealing the tip.” The employee gets *those* dollars. They’re simply reducing their incentive pay by the same amount.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
That's not how federal law works, McDermott, aside from in the bullshit gig contractor pool. If this were a restaurant, they would be in violation of federal law, and state law in nearly every state (even the ones that are shit for restaurant labor). Even your example is wrong.
Its not [$1 plus tip] or [Guarantee], because if it were the tip button would not exist and they would just be salary workers. At best this would be fraud to the consumer as what tip is defined as is not what is being done. And no restaurant gives people a toggle between the two by patron. And certainly it is against the law for a restaurant to throttle your pay based upon the tip received per meal (full stop, this is a literal crime).
Now, you might argue "Doordash drivers know what they are getting in to by being such a contractor" and, sure. That's certainly true. But it doesn't make the part for the consumer any less fraud, because tips have specific restrictions and definitions in the US (by law, a tip is always owned by the receiver of the tip unless specific federal constraints are met, namely tip pooling laws).
The only reason Doordash isn't the poster-child for what will happen when a court slaps them up aside the head is that our legal system hasn't yet adjusted for the contract-based gig economy problem, which is (at best, across all forms of it) a tech-bro garbage way to essentially game our legal system to avoid paying taxes and employees as otherwise constrained in our legal framework.
Well, Doordash's pay per delivery is actually as stated:
$1.00 + Tip + Top Up + Incentives
The top up is variable and can be zero. So, the tip does go to the driver in all cases in the strictest sense of the truth. Its basically saying, yeah, the customer didn't tip but we still want you to take the order, so we'll pay you more. Will you take it now?
Just as a side note to this discussion, I'm semi-retired and I do the set of food delivery gig jobs (Doordash, Ubereats, Skip the Dishes) to get myself out and about, and earn a few extra dollars. I don't support myself via these apps and mainly do it because I like driving and going places, so I'm not offering any moral opinions on what they do, just clearing up a few things from a driver's perspective.
Some of these places do the "We pay you a delivery fee based on distance + whatever the customer tips you", versus Doordash's "We will pay you X amount to deliver, all included". And, honestly, I prefer Doordash's method simply because it actually results in more pay on average than the other system (people are super cheap on average when they use a delivery app versus paying in cash).
Doordash doesn't shout out that they're using tips to subsidize (though they don't take a lot of steps to hide it from the driver either, the breakdown of where the money came from that you got paid for the delivery is right in the app), but they also don't mislead you by saying "We'll pay you the guaranteed amount plus tips" -- its clearly stated up front that the guaranteed amount includes any tips.
(Though, for the person that used the $20 tip as an example, you get pay over the guaranteed rate when that happens. Basically, the first $7 or so of the tip goes into the Doordash pot, and then the rest goes to the driver upon completion of the delivery. But they never mention over rate guarantees at any point during the orientation process, and it rarely happens anyway.)
I know that as a customer, I'd be a bit ticked if I thought my tip was going to the delivery person on top of their pay, but it was actually just letting the company get out of paying them part of their agreed upon compensation.
Again, depending on state that's how it always works with tips.
The thing about restaurants and the alternate minimum wage is a bit of a red herring. (granted it's its own form of bullshit and shouldn't be legal but...)
The main difference here is that for restaurants the amount the employer is siphoning by not needing to pay the full wage is fairly limited. You're looking at a single tip in an hour making up that difference, even if you average it all out the vast majority of tips received are going to the employee.
Whereas with doordash there's no limit in how much they can siphon. Every transaction is subject. If you do 100 deliveries doordash takes 100 times more.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I am confident that major restaurant chains are watching Door Dash to see how this plays out and if a new avenue of screwing employees has been discovered.
I am confident that major restaurant chains are watching Door Dash to see how this plays out and if a new avenue of screwing employees has been discovered.
It isn't new, many states lets restaurants pay below minimum wage as long as they make up the difference if the tips the server earns isn't enough to push them over the state minimum wage.
Only thing different is that since Door Dash doesn't pay a wage, but *technically* a commission, they don't have to promise to pay even that much.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Quite different, really!
I've actually worked in the service industry in different environments (banquet, retail restaurant, hotel restaurant) and if you make more than minimum wage in tips you don't see that $2.50 an hour. You typically receive a pay check for $0.00 because that $2.50 per hour is eaten up by withholding. Even for servers who aren't reporting 100% of their tips.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Quite different, really!
No, you’re mixing up the numbers.
The $1 is the minimum commission for a delivery. You get that, plus your tips. All of it. That is analogous to the $2.13/hr plus tips.
Only if that combined amount doesn’t add up to the $6.83 (in the OP example) do they “top up” the difference to get you to the guarantee. That’s the $7.25/hr.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Quite different, really!
No, you’re mixing up the numbers.
The $1 is the minimum commission for a delivery. You get that, plus your tips. All of it. That is analogous to the $2.13/hr plus tips.
Only if that combined amount doesn’t add up to the $6.83 (in the OP) do they “top up” the difference to get you to the guarantee. That’s the $7.25/hr.
If you get zero tip, door dash pays you $6.83. if you get a $5.83 tip, door dash pays you $1.
Your tip makes no difference, unless the tip is more than the door dash commission minimum.
That is not how restaurants work, it is not how Americans understand tipping, and it is not a good thing for the customer or the driver!
Witholdings doesn't mean they didn't pay you the wage.
I've also worked in the food service industry for a dozen years.
You don't get to "keep both" anymore than someone driving for Door Dash. Nothing I saw in the OP stated that any tip large enough to go above the guaranteed rate was also taken by the company. There is effectively nothing different between this model and other tips based models which already exist. As has been pointed out previously in the thread, this doesn't mean there aren't other issues with app based delivery jobs or even tip based service industry jobs (which go beyond even what this thread is meant to discuss).
Witholdings doesn't mean they didn't pay you the wage.
I've also worked in the food service industry for a dozen years.
You don't get to "keep both" anymore than someone driving for Door Dash. Nothing I saw in the OP stated that any tip large enough to go above the guaranteed rate was also taken by the company. There is effectively nothing different between this model and other tips based models which already exist. As has been pointed out previously in the thread, this doesn't mean there aren't other issues with app based delivery jobs or even tip based service industry jobs (which go beyond even what this thread is meant to discuss).
You one hundred percent do get to keep both! If the company took away your wages, you would get still get a paycheck for 0, but you would also owe the government an extra $2.5/h at the end of the year when you do your taxes!
The fact that the government taxes you doesn't mean that your company pays you less.
Right this is what was tickling my brain about this: this isn't a new or unique phenomenon. The "less then minimum wage" BS restaurants can do is exactly this.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Quite different, really!
No, you’re mixing up the numbers.
The $1 is the minimum commission for a delivery. You get that, plus your tips. All of it. That is analogous to the $2.13/hr plus tips.
Only if that combined amount doesn’t add up to the $6.83 (in the OP) do they “top up” the difference to get you to the guarantee. That’s the $7.25/hr.
If you get zero tip, door dash pays you $6.83. if you get a $5.83 tip, door dash pays you $1.
Your tip makes no difference, unless the tip is more than the door dash commission minimum.
That is not how restaurants work, it is not how Americans understand tipping, and it is not a good thing for the customer or the driver!
By my reading of the DOL site, that’s basically how tip credit works as well.
My employer tells me they will pay me $2.13/hr. My tips are mine to keep. If my tips plus that $2.13/hr do not add up to $7.25/hr, I must be paid the difference by my employer.
If I work one hour in my waiting career, and have one table, and they tip $0, my employer pays me $7.25. If they tip $5.12, my employer pays $2.13.
That customer’s tip makes no difference, unless it is greater than the tip credit claimed by my employer.
I'd assume that in practice, failing to reach the minimum wage in tips will result in the employer covering the difference and then immediately firing you?
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
And regardless of how similar they are to each other, both systems sound bad. Try not to do either.
I'd assume that in practice, failing to reach the minimum wage in tips will result in the employer covering the difference and then immediately firing you?
My experience as a server outside of banquet settings was that this was heavily implied, that if you were consistently not meeting the higher minimum wage then you would be let go. Of course the employer would not really know whether you were not actually making any money or just not reporting your tips to the point that according to the system you weren't making enough (the official line from every manager at every place I ever worked as a server was to report 100% tips but it was not uncommon for servers to not report 100% every shift). But there were also some other bad practices like implied expectation to work off the clock. Banquet was actually probably the best employment environment I worked as a server for multiple reasons (no lower minimum pay, gratuity was generally higher, you weren't expected to both serve and be a janitor, managers were much more likely to take care of employees including comping hotel rooms for employees who worked very large and long weekend events instead of expecting sleep deprived servers to drive home, free meals).
Like, if I was good at math I could probably find a proof.
Restaurants;
2.5 + tip = x
If x is < 7.25 then x = 7.25
Door dash;
1 + tip = y
If 1+tip is > y then y = tip + 1
These are not the same thing?
If tip is 10 than the server made 12.5. if the tip is zero they made 7.25
If the tip is zero, the driver made y. If the tip is less than y, the driver made y. If the tip is greater than y the driver made tip+$1.
Not the same!
They are not the same because $1 and $2.13 are not equal.
They are *parallel* though, which is obvious if you stick to variables.
You get paid $X+$T, or $M, whichever is greater.
With DoorDash, X is 1, T is the tip, and M is a variable minimum guarantee for the delivery.
With a restaurant, $X is 2.13, T is tip, and M is 7.25 (the minimum guarantee for an hour of labor).
In both cases, if T<M-X, then it may as well be zero, because the customers tip makes no difference in the outcome.
In both cases, if T>M-X, the server comes out ahead.
That last sentence is what I disagree with. Because the server comes out ahead, where's as in the drivers case, door dash comes out ahead. And the server does better than the driver.
I would bet than in the servers case 95% of them are making more than the minimum
I would be that in doordashs case 95% are making exactly the minimum.
+1
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Like, if I was good at math I could probably find a proof.
Restaurants;
2.5 + tip = x
If x is < 7.25 then x = 7.25
Door dash;
1 + tip = y
If 1+tip is > y then y = tip + 1
These are not the same thing?
If tip is 10 than the server made 12.5. if the tip is zero they made 7.25
If the tip is zero, the driver made y. If the tip is less than y, the driver made y. If the tip is greater than y the driver made tip+$1.
Not the same!
They are not the same because $1 and $2.13 are not equal.
They are *parallel* though, which is obvious if you stick to variables.
You get paid $X+$T, or $M, whichever is greater.
With DoorDash, X is 1, T is the tip, and M is a variable minimum guarantee for the delivery.
With a restaurant, $X is 2.13, T is tip, and M is 7.25 (the minimum guarantee for an hour of labor).
In both cases, if T<M-X, then it may as well be zero, because the customers tip makes no difference in the outcome.
In both cases, if T>M-X, the server comes out ahead.
Though DoorDash Drivers needs to make up that T>M for each delivery, where a server just needs it to average the hours worked per month. (i.e. 1 T>M per hour, averaged over the pay period)
If it's always T<M, i.e. everybody just decides to give $5 tip regardless, DoorDash Drivers will never make any tip money whereas the server can as long as they have enough tables per hour.
Like, if I was good at math I could probably find a proof.
Restaurants;
2.5 + tip = x
If x is < 7.25 then x = 7.25
Door dash;
1 + tip = y
If 1+tip is > y then y = tip + 1
These are not the same thing?
If tip is 10 than the server made 12.5. if the tip is zero they made 7.25
If the tip is zero, the driver made y. If the tip is less than y, the driver made y. If the tip is greater than y the driver made tip+$1.
Not the same!
They are not the same because $1 and $2.13 are not equal.
They are *parallel* though, which is obvious if you stick to variables.
You get paid $X+$T, or $M, whichever is greater.
With DoorDash, X is 1, T is the tip, and M is a variable minimum guarantee for the delivery.
With a restaurant, $X is 2.13, T is tip, and M is 7.25 (the minimum guarantee for an hour of labor).
In both cases, if T<M-X, then it may as well be zero, because the customers tip makes no difference in the outcome.
In both cases, if T>M-X, the server comes out ahead.
Though DoorDash Drivers needs to make up that T>M for each delivery, where a server just needs it to average the hours worked per month. (i.e. 1 T>M per hour, averaged over the pay period)
If it's always T<M, i.e. everybody just decides to give $5 tip regardless, DoorDash Drivers will never make any tip money whereas the server can as long as they have enough tables per hour.
But DD Drivers still receive M in this scenario, it's just coming out of DD's pocket instead of the customer. They're M-(T+X) per order ahead of where they'd be if there were no guaranteed minimum.
0
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Like, if I was good at math I could probably find a proof.
Restaurants;
2.5 + tip = x
If x is < 7.25 then x = 7.25
Door dash;
1 + tip = y
If 1+tip is > y then y = tip + 1
These are not the same thing?
If tip is 10 than the server made 12.5. if the tip is zero they made 7.25
If the tip is zero, the driver made y. If the tip is less than y, the driver made y. If the tip is greater than y the driver made tip+$1.
Not the same!
They are not the same because $1 and $2.13 are not equal.
They are *parallel* though, which is obvious if you stick to variables.
You get paid $X+$T, or $M, whichever is greater.
With DoorDash, X is 1, T is the tip, and M is a variable minimum guarantee for the delivery.
With a restaurant, $X is 2.13, T is tip, and M is 7.25 (the minimum guarantee for an hour of labor).
In both cases, if T<M-X, then it may as well be zero, because the customers tip makes no difference in the outcome.
In both cases, if T>M-X, the server comes out ahead.
Though DoorDash Drivers needs to make up that T>M for each delivery, where a server just needs it to average the hours worked per month. (i.e. 1 T>M per hour, averaged over the pay period)
If it's always T<M, i.e. everybody just decides to give $5 tip regardless, DoorDash Drivers will never make any tip money whereas the server can as long as they have enough tables per hour.
But DD Drivers still receive M in this scenario, it's just coming out of DD's pocket instead of the customer. They're M-(T+X) per order ahead of where they'd be if there were no guaranteed minimum.
But they'll never get over M since it's per transaction. Which means tipping offer no utility for either the employee or the customer.
So it's different than how restaurants work at least in the practical outcome.
Posts
Again, depending on state that's how it always works with tips.
Which is pretty F-ed as well.
Amazon Flex pioneered this? I don't know if flex drivers are as big as other driving apps, but the big companies definitely started this trend
But it is 100% lying to the customer, because clicking the 'tip' button means the money goes to that person, in everyone's mind, but really, that tip money goes to the company unless you overtip by more than 100% of the items delivery cost.
So it's bad for the drivers because they get less tip, and it's bad for the customers because the company is lying to them, but making none the wiser.
Like supervillain evil, really.
Or health insurance company evil, at the minimum. Cause they do a lot of the same stuff, except also kill people to save money.
The money does go to that person. And then the company gets to pay them less.
Which, and this cannot be stressed enough, is exactly how restaurants have worked for longer than most of us have been alive, and is still how it works to this day in like 37 states. If you tip your server, the restaurant gets to credit that toward their minimum wage and pay them less.
When you tip your server in most states you are giving part...or potentially all...of that tip to the owner. Not the server. That’s always been the deal with tipped employees across most of the US.
"There are more companies/industries who are also screwing over workers, and it's been happening for a while", is absolutely not a good excuse.
I would absolutely wager that most people tipping delivery people and waitstaff don't realize this.
Yeah but you can't claim that Silicon Valley is the new Mordor source of all of capitalism evils when they are just doing what everyone else has always been doing.
Since I'm not really doing this for the cash, I don't tend to decline a lot of deliveries even if they're going to lower class areas (hey -- I don't go to them normally, and they're almost always for families, anyway). When I'm driving for Skip (which is pure distance + whatever tip), I will notice that a lot of the time when I get to a restaurant for an order that's going to a "less nice" neighborhood, I get a lot of "Where the fuck where you? This order has been sitting for an hour!" complaints. Now, I only get the orders within 5-10 minutes or so of me arriving, so that means the order got passed by a -lot- of drivers before it came to me. And that's because low/no tip plus shady neighborhood equals long waits and bad service.
When I deliver for Doordash, that's much more rare. If you're getting paid equally well to go a higher or lower end area, then there's not nearly so much disparity in service. And a lot of the families are pretty relieved to hear when I tell them to save their money on the tip -- their tips get subsidized by the higher end clientele anyway.
Except that a lot of these Silicon Valley/gig economy jobs find ways to skirt around minimum wage laws, as well as a number of other worker protection laws, in addition to any old school mistreatment.
Edit: As well, maybe this is a good chance to shine a light on some shitty business practices that have been allowed to go on for far too long.
Of course not. I’m not defending this practice. I’m decidedly anti-tip, in any and all contexts. I tip only because social norms require it and because compensation for tipped employees is set under the assumption that I’ll follow those norms.
I just think it’s important to keep this in perspective. Because for some reason most people think about these things this way when they click the tip button on the DoorDash app but the same reaction isn’t triggered when they write a tip in on their Applebee’s receipt.
For some reason “DoorDash drivers treated the exact same way as literally millions of other tipped employees” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
yeah that's also theft, is the thing
You are conflating tip credit with what doordash is doing, which is inaccurate. Tip credit allows folks to pay less than the minimum wage, but not in an adjustable rate relative to their tips earned. Under tip credit I may only make $5 an hour in my state, less than minimum, but anything I make in tips are mine and mine alone. If my restaurant wanted to pool tips for the whole house, they would not be eligible to operate on Tip credit and I would have to make minimum wage and get a cut of the tip pool.
Doordash is running, essentially, a pooled tip, only the pool doesn't include the driver (which is already on sketchy ground with labor laws) or really anyone but the company as a whole. Not only that, but Doordash isn't paying minimum wage. They are getting the corporate benefits of both Tip Credit and Tip Pooling without paying any of it out.
And were it not for the gig economy functionality, if they were a restaurant they would be open to one hell of a class action lawsuit.
Same way a server’s agreed upon compensation is $2.13 an hour plus tip, or $7.25 an hour. Whichever is more.
In both situations the customer is paying the company, not the employer, the difference between those two numbers every time they tip.
Yeah tipping is awful to begin with, not a good defense for this behavior for delivery drivers, sorry.
The fun thing is, does this tip mechanic implicitly define doordash workers as employees then, instead of independent contractors like with what uber does? If they're not employees, stealing the tip to balance it and adjust to the wage might be illegal in a lot of states. But not having proper W4/W2s set up might also be illegal too eh?
I would wager that, for legal purposes, DoorDash pays $1 per delivery, flat. That is the agreed upon rate for the delivery.
Any “guarantee” incentive paid out above that is a separate item, and can be reduced for tips received in the system.
Because again, they aren’t “stealing the tip.” The employee gets *those* dollars. They’re simply reducing their incentive pay by the same amount.
Its not [$1 plus tip] or [Guarantee], because if it were the tip button would not exist and they would just be salary workers. At best this would be fraud to the consumer as what tip is defined as is not what is being done. And no restaurant gives people a toggle between the two by patron. And certainly it is against the law for a restaurant to throttle your pay based upon the tip received per meal (full stop, this is a literal crime).
Now, you might argue "Doordash drivers know what they are getting in to by being such a contractor" and, sure. That's certainly true. But it doesn't make the part for the consumer any less fraud, because tips have specific restrictions and definitions in the US (by law, a tip is always owned by the receiver of the tip unless specific federal constraints are met, namely tip pooling laws).
The only reason Doordash isn't the poster-child for what will happen when a court slaps them up aside the head is that our legal system hasn't yet adjusted for the contract-based gig economy problem, which is (at best, across all forms of it) a tech-bro garbage way to essentially game our legal system to avoid paying taxes and employees as otherwise constrained in our legal framework.
$1.00 + Tip + Top Up + Incentives
The top up is variable and can be zero. So, the tip does go to the driver in all cases in the strictest sense of the truth. Its basically saying, yeah, the customer didn't tip but we still want you to take the order, so we'll pay you more. Will you take it now?
Edit
The main difference here is that for restaurants the amount the employer is siphoning by not needing to pay the full wage is fairly limited. You're looking at a single tip in an hour making up that difference, even if you average it all out the vast majority of tips received are going to the employee.
Whereas with doordash there's no limit in how much they can siphon. Every transaction is subject. If you do 100 deliveries doordash takes 100 times more.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
It isn't new, many states lets restaurants pay below minimum wage as long as they make up the difference if the tips the server earns isn't enough to push them over the state minimum wage.
Only thing different is that since Door Dash doesn't pay a wage, but *technically* a commission, they don't have to promise to pay even that much.
No, it really isn't. It's close, but actually worse.
A restaurant pays you $2.5/hour regardless of your tip. If you tip brings you to less than $7.25/hour the restaurant must pay the remainder. If your tip + wage makes you more, you get to keep all of both!
Here, door dash tells you a minimum commission. Then they take away any tips that you earn that are less than their stated minimum commission. And they take away the minimum wage as long as you get at least that in tips.
Quite different, really!
I've actually worked in the service industry in different environments (banquet, retail restaurant, hotel restaurant) and if you make more than minimum wage in tips you don't see that $2.50 an hour. You typically receive a pay check for $0.00 because that $2.50 per hour is eaten up by withholding. Even for servers who aren't reporting 100% of their tips.
I've also worked in the food service industry for a dozen years.
Your wage being taxed to 0 =\= wage being 0
No, you’re mixing up the numbers.
The $1 is the minimum commission for a delivery. You get that, plus your tips. All of it. That is analogous to the $2.13/hr plus tips.
Only if that combined amount doesn’t add up to the $6.83 (in the OP example) do they “top up” the difference to get you to the guarantee. That’s the $7.25/hr.
If you get zero tip, door dash pays you $6.83. if you get a $5.83 tip, door dash pays you $1.
Your tip makes no difference, unless the tip is more than the door dash commission minimum.
That is not how restaurants work, it is not how Americans understand tipping, and it is not a good thing for the customer or the driver!
You don't get to "keep both" anymore than someone driving for Door Dash. Nothing I saw in the OP stated that any tip large enough to go above the guaranteed rate was also taken by the company. There is effectively nothing different between this model and other tips based models which already exist. As has been pointed out previously in the thread, this doesn't mean there aren't other issues with app based delivery jobs or even tip based service industry jobs (which go beyond even what this thread is meant to discuss).
You one hundred percent do get to keep both! If the company took away your wages, you would get still get a paycheck for 0, but you would also owe the government an extra $2.5/h at the end of the year when you do your taxes!
The fact that the government taxes you doesn't mean that your company pays you less.
By my reading of the DOL site, that’s basically how tip credit works as well.
My employer tells me they will pay me $2.13/hr. My tips are mine to keep. If my tips plus that $2.13/hr do not add up to $7.25/hr, I must be paid the difference by my employer.
If I work one hour in my waiting career, and have one table, and they tip $0, my employer pays me $7.25. If they tip $5.12, my employer pays $2.13.
That customer’s tip makes no difference, unless it is greater than the tip credit claimed by my employer.
Restaurants;
2.5 + tip = x
If x is < 7.25 then x = 7.25
Door dash;
1 + tip = y
If 1+tip is > y then y = tip + 1
These are not the same thing?
If tip is 10 than the server made 12.5. if the tip is zero they made 7.25
If the tip is zero, the driver made y. If the tip is less than y, the driver made y. If the tip is greater than y the driver made tip+$1.
Not the same!
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
They are not the same because $1 and $2.13 are not equal.
They are *parallel* though, which is obvious if you stick to variables.
You get paid $X+$T, or $M, whichever is greater.
With DoorDash, X is 1, T is the tip, and M is a variable minimum guarantee for the delivery.
With a restaurant, $X is 2.13, T is tip, and M is 7.25 (the minimum guarantee for an hour of labor).
In both cases, if T<M-X, then it may as well be zero, because the customers tip makes no difference in the outcome.
In both cases, if T>M-X, the server comes out ahead.
My experience as a server outside of banquet settings was that this was heavily implied, that if you were consistently not meeting the higher minimum wage then you would be let go. Of course the employer would not really know whether you were not actually making any money or just not reporting your tips to the point that according to the system you weren't making enough (the official line from every manager at every place I ever worked as a server was to report 100% tips but it was not uncommon for servers to not report 100% every shift). But there were also some other bad practices like implied expectation to work off the clock. Banquet was actually probably the best employment environment I worked as a server for multiple reasons (no lower minimum pay, gratuity was generally higher, you weren't expected to both serve and be a janitor, managers were much more likely to take care of employees including comping hotel rooms for employees who worked very large and long weekend events instead of expecting sleep deprived servers to drive home, free meals).
That last sentence is what I disagree with. Because the server comes out ahead, where's as in the drivers case, door dash comes out ahead. And the server does better than the driver.
I would bet than in the servers case 95% of them are making more than the minimum
I would be that in doordashs case 95% are making exactly the minimum.
Though DoorDash Drivers needs to make up that T>M for each delivery, where a server just needs it to average the hours worked per month. (i.e. 1 T>M per hour, averaged over the pay period)
If it's always T<M, i.e. everybody just decides to give $5 tip regardless, DoorDash Drivers will never make any tip money whereas the server can as long as they have enough tables per hour.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
But DD Drivers still receive M in this scenario, it's just coming out of DD's pocket instead of the customer. They're M-(T+X) per order ahead of where they'd be if there were no guaranteed minimum.
But they'll never get over M since it's per transaction. Which means tipping offer no utility for either the employee or the customer.
So it's different than how restaurants work at least in the practical outcome.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious