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Where does a tip to an Amazon driver go? Sometimes, toward the driver's base pay
- elliekelly 8y agoSince when are people expected to tip package delivery drivers? I didn’t even know this was an option in the Amazon app.
- ceejayoz 8y agoI think it's only for their Amazon Fresh / Amazon Prime Now deliveries, not the general "we're replacing USPS / UPS" ones.
- Dylan16807 8y agoDoing the same thing a day faster probably shouldn't be the decider between tipped/untipped.
- deogeo 8y agoAgain I am puzzled how this does not count as fraud - a felony with a jail term measured in years. And no, re-defining 'tip' to mean whatever Amazon wants it to mean somewhere in the Terms of Service fine print does not absolve them.
- doctorpangloss 8y agoIn the food service industry, for example, your tips almost always reduce base pay until a federal, legal minimum different from the better known minimum wage. I’m not saying that’s just. Companies abuse service workers, and use some legalistic convention to do so. Would you go suing basically every restaurant for fraud though? Justice here really means legislating the wages and tips laws to be more generous to workers.
- thatoneuser 8y agoThat's not how it works. They get a base pay without considering tips. If they get tips they get more. They don't get a base pay that gets eaten away by tips until the tips exceed their pay, otherwise why would anyone bother to work harder for the tips if they just get the same amount?
- benmanns 8y agoThis is exactly how it works. You get minimum wage. If you get tips, your wage can be reduced to the tipped employee minimum wage of some $2 per hour. Usually $2 plus your tips put you over minimum wage, but not always.
- beatpanda 8y agoIt depends on the state. Lots and lots of states have tipped wage laws that allow an employer to count tips toward base pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage
- bryanlarsen 8y agoThat's exactly how it works. For example in West Virginia, you get paid either 8.50 or 2.62 plus your tips, whichever is more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage
- colechristensen 8y agoA few successful waitresses I've known earned 2-4x minimum wage with tips and fought hard against proposed local laws that would cancel that "tips count towards minimum wage" concept on the grounds that restaurants couldn't afford it.
- StudentStuff 8y agoYet restaurants do quite well in the seven states that ban this shady practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States#State_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
- thatoneuser 8y agoI love when stories like this come in and you see everyone defending the company because they redefined terms that obviously mean a certain thing. Part of the reason tech giants are so big is they do all these things that would be illegal for me and you, but they get a pass.
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- Eridrus 8y agoIn the long run, without any wage theft, you should expect any increase in tips lead to a reduction in base pay since employees only really care about their total comp, not whether it comes from tips of salary. So while this practice is scummy, it's basically just speeding up what would happen normally.
- jonny_eh 8y agoAnother good reason to abolish tipping entirely.
- spiznnx 8y agoI've always been skeptical of where my digital tips are going. Even in local restaurants if I have the cash, I'll write "cash" on the tip line for the credit card receipt and tip in cash.
- mhb 8y agoWhy do you write anything?
- joecool1029 8y ago> Why do you write anything? Should be obvious: So that unscrupulous places don't fill in their own tip amount.
- mhb 8y agoNot obvious to me, but OK. I guess writing the total would also serve that purpose and you could save time by not writing anything in the tip area.
- chrisseaton 8y agoWhat does it matter what they write on paper - I only authorise the amount I intend to when I put my PIN in and no paper will change that.
- jrockway 8y agoThat is not how payment at restaurants in the United States works.
- BorgHunter 8y agoPayment at restaurants in the United States is very different than you might be imagining. The process goes like this: * Server brings bill, disappears to go serve others * Patron places credit card in the sleeve thing the bill came in, leaves it on the table, waits. (Maybe is still finishing a drink or dessert at this point.) * Server picks it up at some point, takes it to a register, swipes it (not in view of the patron). There is no entering of a PIN, because U.S. credit cards do not require a PIN. * Server brings receipt back to patron. There are at least two copies: "Merchant copy" and "customer copy". Each has two blank lines: One that says "Tip", and one that says "Total". Often a range of "suggested" tips is provided below. The "Merchant copy" also has a line for a signature. * Patron fills out "Merchant copy" with their desired tip, and does the math to fill out the total. Signs the signature line. Takes "Customer copy" with them, leaves "Merchant copy" in the sleeve, and exits the restaurant. * Server takes "Merchant copy" and puts it in the stack designated for such things. * At some point that day, a restaurant employee goes through the stack of "Merchant copy" receipts and enters the tip amounts for each one into the register. It's an insane system that beggars belief for people who aren't aware of it. But this is how it works at probably more than 95% of "sit-down restaurants" I've eaten at in the U.S.
- beering 8y agoI can't wait for tipping culture to end - it's just a way for service workers to be abused in a multitude of ways. I only wish more workers would realize that it will be better for them collectively to get upset at their employers for not paying them fairly instead of the last customer who stiffed them on the tip.
- StudentStuff 8y agoTipping culture should die, and 7 states thus far have banned the mistreatment of servers via reducing their wage due to earned tips. Amazon knew this practice was against the spirit of the law in its home state, and it likely would result in penalties if Working Washington or similar chooses to take them to court over this fraudulent practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States#State_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
- consp 8y agoI got sad by those numbers. Looking at them I wonder how the workers are able to live at all. What happened to the "tip is for good service" and the base being covered by the employer for services rendered (e.g. the bottom line of the company)?
- jnty 8y agoThere was a never a 'golden age' of tipping where everyone was getting paid fairly. Make no mistake, tipping was and is usually used as a way of justifying lower wages.
- nicoburns 8y agoThis is how tips work in virtually every country other than the US though. Tips are still a thing, but they're optional because minimum wage is the same for serving staff as it is for everyone else.
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- raz32dust 8y agoCan we take this opportunity to get rid of institutionalized tipping entirely? It is beyond me why this is even accepted, let alone expected behavior for companies to specifically ask for tips on behalf of workers. I traveled to several (developed) countries recently recently and was pleasantly surprised and relieved to not have to worry about tipping for each and every service.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoI can tolerate it but I don't understand why 20% is now regarded as "normal" for a basic level of service.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIt’s not, unless you want to signal how much money you’re willing to throw around.
- colechristensen 8y agoI have known plenty of smart, capable people who worked hard in the service industry and, frankly, deserve it. I don't like the idea of people working for my benefit earning starvation wages.
- gamblor956 8y agoI understand why the kitchen staff deserves tips, they're the ones doing all the real work. I can't understand why the server who spends at most 2-3 minutes an hour taking the order and carrying it from the kitchen to the table deserves 20% of the bill. (In my area servers and kitchen staff now make the same standard minimum wage before tips, so it's especially obscene to demand 20% on top of the $12-$15/hour the server is already making for almost no work.)
- colechristensen 8y agoI'd challenge you actually try to get to know some people working as waitresses and reevaluate your position about tipping on top of minimum wage being "obscene".
- d6e 8y agoTipping is bad for everyone, but Americans love it.
- m000 8y agoWhat's not to love? It makes you feel rich and generous for a moment: "Look at me as I'm sharing my riches to save this pleb waiter from certain starvation."
- iicc 8y agoObligatory http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/ http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/
- andrewmcwatters 8y agohttps://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
- crazygringo 8y agoI think the problem here is that in some lines of work, it's generally understood that the worker only makes tips (waiters, bartenders -- any base pay is negligible), in other lines of work it's generally understood that the tip is a nice but non-required "extra" that nobody should be depending on (barista, Uber driver), and in yet further cases it's a "required" extra (taxi driver, hairdresser, massage therapist). And while pre-Internet delivery was previously understood to be only tips (e.g. in NYC, the person delivering your Chinese food is paid solely by your tips, not by the restaurant, effectively just like a waiter)... ...we haven't societally established what the right expectation is for dot-com delivery people. Because it's such a new thing, most consumers probably assume they're paid a fair wage and tips are either a non-required bonus (like Uber) or a required bonus (like hairdressers). Yet the companies seem to be treating tips as the entire salary (like waiters, bartenders, and restaurant deliveries). Of course there's zero logic to any of this, only custom. And the insane confusion around it is just another argument for getting rid of the damned practice of tipping in the first place, everywhere.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoSimple: they shouldn’t be able to use the word tip. That word has meaning and expectations. Call it “wage subsidy” and see how many people leave anything.
- deogeo 8y agoA very apt suggestion, given how strictly corporations like to define the meaning of words when it's to their advantage: https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/11/17661254/bethesda-sell-used-games-amazon-block https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/11/17661254/bethesda-sell-use...
- astura 8y ago... Does it? I mean, "mandatory"-ish tips have been legal "wage subsidies" for a very, very long time yet are still called "tips." https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-tipping-minimum-wage-service-workers-0402-20180328-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-pe... >The origins of tipping go back more than a century, to the days when only well-heeled Americans dined out and waitstaff constituted a tiny fraction of the nation's labor force. Government left the custom alone, even though — or perhaps because — it reinforced the hierarchy between mostly white, male restaurant customers and their servers, often women and minorities. Even New Deal-era minimum wage laws exempted tipped workers until 1966. By then, tipping was so culturally embedded that Congress took it for granted that certain workers "customarily and regularly" received tips, while others did not. It created the "tip credit" system, whereby restaurants could pay customarily and regularly tipped personnel a much smaller minimum wage than others received, as long as tips offset the difference.... The June 19 ballot initiative in Washington would gradually replace the "tip credit" with a system under which all local restaurant employees would get the statutory minimum wage — soon to be $15 per hour — and servers could still receive tips on top of that. Similar laws prevail in seven states, mostly on the West Coast. However, servers wouldn't necessarily get to keep all of the tips, because the law Congress just passed lets restaurants that pay servers the statutory minimum and don't use the "tip credit" redistribute tips to their back-of-the-house employees. Sounds not so straightforward to me. (That's before we get into tip pooling, which is an extremely common practice.)
- lenkite 8y agoThis is disgusting. Tips are meant for the driver and not for the company. I am truly surprised that so many HN readers have their fundamentals of terms so corrupted that they are choosing to argue about this. Amazon should be upfront - clearly declare that the minimal wage is taken from your tips. Declare this right in the employment contract and call it a wage subsidy. The fact that they are hiding this and not responding to enquiries shows that they are operating in a malicious and dishonest manner. This is injustice to the driver and Amazon should be prosecuted.
- m0zg 8y agoI wonder if The Washington Post will report on this. :-)
- entity345 8y agoIt's the first time I hear about tipping an Amazon driver. Is this an American thing? (part of this 'strange' American tipping culture)
- darkpuma 8y ago> Is this an American thing? (part of this 'strange' American tipping culture) Definitely not, I've never heard of it. The closest I've ever heard of this is writing a christmas card for your mailman once a year.
- darkpuma 8y agoRule of thumb: If you're not tipping cash, you're not tipping.
- slfnflctd 8y agoMost relevant comment here. We can argue all day long about whether this 'culture' should exist or not, the fact is it does exist and there are many situations where the most ethical choice is offer some kind of tip (and cash is most certainly appreciated by those in the know). Yeah, it's archaic and overcomplicated and regressive, much like just about everything else involving human interaction. If you don't like it, abolish the practice in businesses where you can influence such policies. Feel free to withhold tips if you want, in lots of cases the workers you interact will hardly notice because plenty of others do the same. Just know that if you ask a low-wage worker to put up with extra hassle for you and don't offer extra compensation in return, in many cases you will be viewed as clueless and/or selfish. That's just how it is, respond to the reality as you see fit.
- AndyMcConachie 8y agoThis is wage theft.
- purplezooey 8y agoIt's sad. At some point Amazon decided that's how they would handle tips. They do it because they can.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoI don't mind tipping as an appreciation of above average service. I do mind having to pretend to appreciate bad service because certain countries basically just can't be bothered to implement minimum wage, which is what this boils down to. I try not to be a jerk about it and just generally tip on the principle that I don't want to cheat people out of some income they probably need. But it's not exactly a great system. My main problem with this is that all the hard work is typically done by people you don't interact with, which in a restaurant would be the people cleaning the place, cooking the food, doing the dishes, etc. Basically, people working double/triple jobs because of the before mentioned minimum wage issues. So, I tip and I hope some of that trickles down to those people as well. But I would not be surprised to learn that most of that money never ends up where it belongs. In the US, basically you get your ass kissed in a blatantly indifferent and disingenuous way by eager waiters desperate to ensure you tip generously for the service of delivering food from the kitchen to your table. It makes the whole experience of being in a restaurant a lot less pleasant. There's also this pressure to basically leave ASAP so the waiter can start harassing the next customer. So they say, "is everything alright" but what they mean is "hurry up so I can maximize my tip/hour ratio". There's just something deeply unpleasant about that.