We dug into how American tipping culture got so broken, and the fight to fix it.
It turns out that your tips are subsidizing the payrolls of multi-billion dollar chains, while they pay their workers under minimum wage.
It’s a system rooted in slavery, and pushed by a wealthy restaurant owners onto the rest of us.
But there’s a growing movement to change it.
well, generally delivery drivers aren’t employees and signed up to be an independent delivery contractor instead of a W2 job because this is side money and they have other ambitions and they don’t want to be employed by any particular gig app. part of the bright size of it is being able to choose when you drive, where, and being able to say no to any offer at any time, and cherry pick the best offers among all the apps that compete with each other for drivers. being an employee takes away all of that. most politicians get this very wrong. what is important among actual drivers is tip/pay transparancy. don’t hide tips or let drivers be tip baited by people.
This could be spun around to contract work where the company is offering each contractor a set amount of money to deliver each time. Again, there is no need for a customer to subsidize the companies pay
listen I fully agree, they should raise the base pay on delivery jobs to be profitable enough so that tips really are just frosting on the cake and not necessary to make it worth it. but as long as they can’t force anyone to take those orders, they will hopefully sort of have to do it regardless. I only feel bad for the sucker taking them thinking it’s super good money without realizing they still have to pay to upkeep their vehicle all the time they spent on the road.