Alarming only if it contributes to therapists making minimum wage which is not a given. Otherwise, I love not having to deal with tips. I wish every service had tips baked in and we could do away with them entirely.
It's also not a given that they actually go through with assigning proper gratuities.
The success model for startups these days is deceit and breaking laws. If a startup is claiming to be the "Uber of <blah>", I interpret that as a company which thinks being disruptive means breaking laws and screwing people over for the sake of growth and attempting to make good on the outrageously high investments they receive.
What I'm looking for is concrete proof that over the long run, not just in a recruitment surge, therapists end up making a living as good as or better than when they're employed by a spa. If that's not the case, then this is simply another widener of the wealth gap in this country.
If tips are baked into everything they cease to be tips. I find tips are a good thing for services where much of the value is subjective. I like the convention that makes it normal for me to pay more money to a server who goes the extra mile (although I dislike the fact that their base pay can be so low if others don't play along). I love the cashless aspect of Uber, but I hate that tips are included when you reserve SuperShuttle ahead of time. The driver can be as rude and unhelpful as he or she wants, and I still give them "additional gratuity"? Doesn't make sense. It's just a disguise for a higher price.
I've never had to work for tips, but I would HATE to have a profit-maximizing corporation be in charge of how much I get paid in entirely optional cash that has 0 impact on them.
My point is that those wages Soothe pays probably won't be as high as a typical tip-based wage one could earn without Soothe, because Soothe will want to minimize its costs as much as possible. Why pay high tips if it doesn't have to? You're not okay with that? Well fine, you can leave, because in this environment, there are plenty of other people who will work for less generous tips.
Not only does it probably degrade the client experience (the provider doesn't need to go above and beyond because it's not his brand being impacted by his service), but it commoditizes an otherwise vibrant and special service into a dull, grey blob of robots all doing the same thing.
That's my expectation for the long term.
In the short-term, I'm sure their rates will be appealing enough to attract good massage therapists, and I'm sure Soothe will do what it can to make sure its clients feel special. That's what venture capital is for.
My point is that those wages Soothe pays probably won't be as high as a typical tip-based wage one could earn without Soothe, because Soothe will want to minimize its costs as much as possible.
But again, isn't that how almost every job works? I mean, the vast majority of us are working for companies which want to minimize their costs as much as possible. Message therapists just happened to join the other 90% of us. Why the special concern?
This may be a cultural issue, since where I come tipping is much less common.
Well, no. As a consumer, I would assume that a tip is being paid, and that it is indeed an appropriate tip being given completely to the person above and beyond whatever agreement they might have for default service.
If this wasn't the case, Soothe is lying to me, the customer, and not providing what I paid them for. That's deceit.
The success model for startups these days is deceit and breaking laws. If a startup is claiming to be the "Uber of <blah>", I interpret that as a company which thinks being disruptive means breaking laws and screwing people over for the sake of growth and attempting to make good on the outrageously high investments they receive.
What I'm looking for is concrete proof that over the long run, not just in a recruitment surge, therapists end up making a living as good as or better than when they're employed by a spa. If that's not the case, then this is simply another widener of the wealth gap in this country.