There was a lot of backlash when it was revealed DoorDash was taking tips like the method you stated. Now they give the entire tip to the driver regardless of minimum pay.
OP was making a joke that no, it's not "as always" because there wqs a pretty large scandal just a few years ago centered around DoorDash not paying 100% of tips.
so my understanding is: don't tip on doordash after this. This means that the actual cost will be included in the work. I'm all for it. I hate tips, it is arbitrary and terrible.
> They used tips (and may still use tips) to refund themselves for the minimum pay offered to dashers.
Not trying to make a stance one way or another, just wanted to make sure I understand what you meant by this correctly.
Is what you are describing essentially the same way it works in the restaurant industry for waiters/servers?
TLDR: waiters/servers in the US typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage, but they get to keep all the tips. However, if a waiter/server at the end of their pay period makes less with their base pay+tips than what the minimum wage for the area would be, the employer is legally on the hook for making up the difference to the employee.
It would seem to be the same - but also restaurant workers likely don’t hit the minimums frequently, since the kitchen would probably be unprofitable to run in settings where front of house are only making $3/hr.
> TLDR: waiters/servers typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage, but they get to keep all the tips. However, if a waiter/server at the end of their pay period makes less with their base pay+tips than what the minimum wage for the area would be, the employer is legally on the hook for making up the difference to the employee.
I believe that's the federal rule, but several states with higher than federal minimum wages have a uniform minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped workers. If I'm reading the chart correctly[1], those states/territories include Alaska, California, Guam, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Briefly, in 2019, until it made the news and the policy was changed so that drivers kept 100% of tips. There's more nuance than "DD was keeping tips", but plenty already written about that if you care to find the 2019 articles.
Some programmer wrote that statement in the code, wrote the function that was given a tip amount and a driver profile and reduced the tip amount to give the driver under certain circumstances. Someone cut that ticket, brought it up in a grooming session, people asked and answered questions about exactly when a driver's pay should be docked. Other devs probably approved the PR. I bet it even has a clear and concise comment explaining the math and the business purpose. I bet there's a unit test about "do_not_overpay_driver_with_tip". Jesus
I bet they all came onto HN and bitched about taxes and Unions after.
If a driver would be paid $5 for a delivery, and the customer tipped $5, the driver should receive $10.
But what was effectively happening instead was that the pay would be reduced by the tip amount to as low as $2. So now that delivery would actually pay $2 plus the $5 for a total of $7.
On longer range deliveries that might pay $10, the customer could tip $8 and the driver would still only make $10.
Now, from what I understand, DD no longer does this practice and legitimately gives the entire tipped amount to the driver with no reduction in pay from DD, but DD lowered the base delivery pay to compensate.
At the time, IIRC, DD tried to wordsmith what they were doing to not make it sound like they were stealing tips, and instead was simply subsidizing poor tippers with a higher base pay and acting like the keeping of the tip was just the removal of the poor-tip subsidy. I say to-may-toe, you say to-mah-toe, it's bullshit. They were stealing tips.
