I do wish there was a way to tip the drivers who deliver my Amazon Prime stuff, though.
I don't want to tip someone who presses a few buttons on a screen to take my food order, that they usually mess up and sometimes add on a free side of bad attitude.
I would like an easy way to tip the guy who is trudging through the snow to deliver my 2KG jar of peanut butter at 9:30pm in January. I like this guy...
Wouldn't that just continue to expand a bad practice? If drivers got tips, Amazon would lower their wages, and we'd just have another domain where we have to make extra decisions.
This may be true, but my calculus in this situation was limited to "Guy came through deep snow at 9:30pm to deliver peanut butter...he deserves some money, I have some money, I would like a simple and effective way to transfer it to him."
(Note: I was not home when the delivery was made...)
>(Note: I was not home when the delivery was made...)
If you know when an order is coming, you could copy some of the older folks I doordashed for. They often left money for the drivers in an envelope on the door.
Tipping in Canada is extra absurd. The minimum wage for servers and bartenders is the same as for regular workers (eg. $15.50 per hour in Ontario). But thanks to cultural osmosis from the US, 15-25% tips are also expected on top of that.
US tip workers also get full minimum wage. Tip workers who don't meet the minimum wage threshold on total earnings are compensated for the shortfall. The lower tip worker rate is a subsidy to business owners paid for by guilt tripping their customers.
> US tip workers also get full minimum wage. Tip workers who don't meet the minimum wage threshold on total earnings are compensated for the shortfall.
So they don’t get tips on top of the minimum wage.
Where I live in the US, mandatory minimum wage is $18.69/hr. Tips are on top of that. It has less to do with a living wage and more to do with the fact that the employees make less money with a mandatory 20% service charge than they do via tips.
What's a mandatory service charge even supposed to be? Are restaurant bills cost-plus contracts? Is there also a refrigeration charge, and an ingredients charge?
Yes, service is added as a 20% charge based on the total bill. This is to offset the absence of tipping. If you simply add 20% to menu prices, it has other adverse consequences that reduce employee income in practice.
In southern Europe, automatic 10% tips are often included. But the server will whisper into your ear that he doesn't see any of those 10%, owner takes it all for herself.
Well, unless those areas have worse laws than the US somehow, make sure the server knows that at the very least they should sue the day they quit or get fired.
This compulsion to threaten a lawsuit is such a quintessentially so American. For an American service worker, it also isn't realistic to carry out a lawsuit given that most are working paycheck to paycheck.
Unfortunately, wage theft dwarfs petty theft in the United States due to economic inequality and the inaccessibility of the mostly pay2win American legal system, for the average worker. Millions of workers lose billions in stolen wages every year—nearly as much as all other property theft. [1]
And I didn't say "carry out a lawsuit". You can go to small claims court. Especially since you just lost that job; you can afford the few hours.
I also said "at least", because this is just the plan B if labor enforcement won't do their job and get the money for you. But I assume you don't trust labor enforcement if your plan is to let that 10% get stolen and do nothing.
I do wish there was a way to tip the drivers who deliver my Amazon Prime stuff, though.
I don't want to tip someone who presses a few buttons on a screen to take my food order, that they usually mess up and sometimes add on a free side of bad attitude.
I would like an easy way to tip the guy who is trudging through the snow to deliver my 2KG jar of peanut butter at 9:30pm in January. I like this guy...