[gmadsen]

It is a mechanism to move labor costs to the consumer. On some delivery apps , the driver can decide which jobs to take based on the pre-service tip. So the companies have effectively put the responsibility to pay driver's base wage on the users themselves, while the company still takes a huge corporate cut

[vultour]

I suggested we do this at work. We’ll add a tip field to our Jira tickets and whoever’s ticket is worth the most gets priority. Oh you submitted a production incident a week ago? Sorry, there’s not even $5 on it, we filter those out.

[caleblloyd]

We may just get this, along with a $7.25 per hour base wage!

[thfuran]

It's $2.13 for tipped employees.

[xp84]

Not in all states. California does not have a lower tipped minimum wage. It's at least $16 here last I checked (except $20 for fast food because "reasons")

[aidenn0]

Ah yes; for a bit my wife was making less as a preschool teacher than the minimum wage at McDonalds. I understand it caused a bit of turnover at the local public schools, since cafeteria workers and aides were making less than $20/hr in 2024 as well (I don't know if they still are).

[assword]

Reminds me of when I was visiting family a few years ago in Kentucky. I kept seeing tons of ads everywhere about hiring for plumbers, and some warehouse roles.

The listed salaries were not that far off from what even the local McDonald’s was paying

[Der_Einzige]

The 2.13 tipped wage is a great way to know if you're in a "shithole" state or not. Only shithole states keep that.

[thfuran]

Same goes for the regular 7.25 federal minimum.

[trial3]

let’s not get too lofty, the federal base tipped wage is $2.13

[amirhirsch]

gotta charge less than the hourly cost of a B200 to remain employed

[firefoxd]

Fun fact, we had this at an old job. It was a charge code field in Jira. It was required whenever you requested work from an external team. It operated like a credit card with a set budget. If you bothered other teams a lot, you ran out of money. Department heads set their price.

It sounds great in theory. But a black market quickly developed, and people figured out ways to circumvent it. People created tickets for their own teams and shared laptops.

[kingstnap]

On delivery apps it should be called a "bid" and I think honestly it would be more ethical than the shady nonsense they do now if they went all in on that.

[bombcar]

If the apps were actually what they claim to be (a marketplace to connect hirers and workers) that's exactly what you'd have - the cost of the food + flat fee for the platform + your bid for the work. The platform could even suggest a bid, but you could choose to bid higher or lower depending on what you think would go through.

But that's not what they are; they're shady "avoid employment laws" companies.

[SilasX]

I often see the claim that it would be above board/legit/not a circumvention of employment laws if they ran a bidding system like that. But ... that's exactly how Sidecar worked (Uber competitor, shut down Dec 2014), and I never saw anyone distinguish them from Uber in their criticisms (until people forgot that model existed).

[parpfish]

i like the idea of bids, but only if its coupled with the ability of workers to just outright reject the offer.

the problem is that there's still a guarantee of service for the user regardless of what you bid. if i want my burritos delivered at 2AM and am only willing to bid $1 on delivery labor, i shouldn't expect that my burritos will be delivered.

for tips, the model is "the work will be done and i'll pay extra if it's good". but with bids its "how much do i need to pay to get this work started"

[vladvasiliu]

> It is a mechanism to move labor costs to the consumer.

How does this work? The corp already handles some form of payment to the worker, especially when you tip as part of a card payment. And in both cases, the consumer foots the bill.

How's it different from paying the worker more and asking for more money upfront?

[xp84]

The gready sleazeballs who like the "tipping" system (mostly, restaurant owners) would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt.

While 10% was customary in the first half of the 20th century, the standard tip gradually increased to 15% by the 1980s.

In 2025 it's not uncommon to see little shortcut buttons for 20, 25, 30%. You can see where this is going. They want us to tip 50% and they pay $0, even though restaurant menu prices are one of the things that has experienced more inflation than other things.

[mindcandy]

> would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt.

It is my understanding that this is literally the origin of tipping.

After the abolition of slavery, there were many black people newly looking for work. And, there were employers looking for workers, but unwilling to pay money to black people.

So, someone got the idea to promote that tipping was something fancy European aristocrats did. And, you can be fancy like they were by tipping my workers (that I refuse to pay).

Tipping was previously seen as un-Americanly classist. And, most states tried to ban it when it started to pick up steam. But, it was too late. So many employers were enjoying unpaid labor that the bans were repealed.

Later, when Minimum Wage was established, workers who lived on tips alone were almost all black. So, unsurprisingly, tipped workers were excluded from the wage regulation. And, today they are only acknowledged as fractional minimum laborers.

[xp84]

Perhaps shouting these problematic racist origins from the rooftops is our best shot at getting the support of the Left on board to at least establish that having business models based on obligatory tipping is unethical, if not to ban it.

[assword]

It would backfire. They’re already losing the culture war. I don’t think the demographic you’re targeting will be very valuable on the scale of real political action.

[Workaccount2]

The workers love the tipping system too, and it is directly in their interest to talk about how much it sucks, so that you are guilted into tipping more.

I spent 10 years in the food service industry working every position. The whole thing is racket, and the narrative used is carefully worded.

[cafard]

When I first had the money to pay for restaurant food ca. 1975, 15% was standard. I think that the Waiter Rant guy considered anything under 20% an insult, about 30 years after that.

[FeloniousHam]

Ah yes, the greedy sleazeballs. If you knew that the total cost of the meal would be the same, say $20 for the meal, does it to you matter if: 1) you pay $20 "no tip" and the owner pays non-tip minimum wage, or b) you pay $16.50 for the food and $3.50 separately to the server in the form of a tip ?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

The problem is that the customer does not know the cost of the meal; they typically rely on the business owner to be upfront about that. Tipping is guilt-motivated drip pricing. The only thing the commenter got wrong is that the restaurateur has to prime the customer with some cost so they can voluntarily add a percentage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing

[geodel]

> If you knew that the total cost of the meal would be the same,..

Huh, why should I know this at all. I read the prices online or in restaurant when I enter in. I will assume that as my cost of food.

[xp84]

> If you knew that the total cost of the meal

That's the crux of it. All surcharges are scams designed to trick the customer into thinking the meal is priced lower than it is. Sales tax not built into menu prices is a scam that the government is at fault for allowing. All other surcharges including the socially-obligatory tip and the scummy "health care surcharges" common in California, are scams that the restaurant is choosing to do. All of these are insulting.

It's no different than telling women I'm 6' and then when they meet me revealing that's only when I'm wearing cowboy boots and a big hat.

[FeloniousHam]

I don't like tipping (in most cases) either, but who is greedy here? The owner, who is following social norms and separating the optional service charge from the cost of the food, or the server dependent on the tip for their wage?

[pc86]

There is a very clear different from the consumer's point of view between paying a 20% delivery fee with no tip (and realistically having most drivers still expect an in-person tip) and a 5% delivery fee with a tip amount of your choosing (and maybe only 1/1000 drivers expecting/requesting yet more).

I have always been a generous tipper and I try to always put myself in that person's shoes when deciding how much to tip but even I notice the psychological difference. If you don't ever think about it, have never had a job waiting tables or dealing with the public, it'd almost be a nonstarter to have a higher delivery fee regardless of tip expectation.

[gmadsen]

psychologically they are very different. Framing the wages as a "tip" moves the conversation to the drivers and users, where users think tips are an out of hand culture problem and drivers view the users as stingy. Then the company sits out of the spotlight collecting their absurd rents

[shit_game]

It moves the real cost of the additional labor from the prices displayed for items (like you would see in a B&M grocery store) to some tertiary part of the purchase process that is displayed 1) after the used has gone through the effort of app navigation and selecting their purchases and 2) has been through the majority of the purchase funnel and self-selected as a high-prospect sale. This helps keep the listed prices for items in these apps relatively comparable to their in-store listed prices, acting to convince the user the sale is reasonable (similar to online sellers making up for low listed prices with high shipping prices). Moving this additional cost to some tertiary step lessens the impact of goods pricing seeming too high by adding a "small optional fee" at the end of the purchase process that the user is expected to subconciously understand is effectively a bid on labor. I'd imagine the psychology behind it is depressing.

[Eisenstein]

That is true. What is also true is that having things delivered to you is not free, and the prices of the goods cannot be same for delivery vs warehousing in a store.

[pc86]

Sure it can.

I'm not saying it's free but it's not a foregone conclusion that 100% (or any percent) of that cost must be passed on to the consumer.

If a manufacturer/distributor/restaurant is willing to accept lower margins for the increased reach and market access, they will.

[Eisenstein]

It cannot be the case because the business would cease to exist in their current form if they did that. They would close their retail stores and become online only, because there is now zero incentive for anyone to go to the store instead of ordering it and having it delivered.

[geodel]

Different because now list price of a sandwich is $8.99 instead of $14 that customer will actually pay. Hotels, resorts, restaurants, tours etc are master at this. Even after knowing these add-ons people fall for it often enough to keep this practice running.

Besides economists think positively of this so it has support not just from interested parties but officials, think tanks etc.