well, yes. look, I’m not a fan of the exploitative “gig economy” either, but you are paying for two things that won’t ever be offered for free to you: (1) food to be prepared for you, and (2) the service of someone to transport it on your behalf. for the prior you pay the menu price. for the latter you pay service fees and tips. if you don’t want to pay extra (atop menu prices) to have someone bring you the food, don’t ask someone to bring you food for money.
the scummy part is not that you’re being made to pay for the services you’re requesting, it’s that the services sometimes lie about how the workers are being paid and how much the service actually costs by wrapping up the worker’s base pay (essentially) as a “tip”. yes. shitty.
but i’m not sure how this differs much from, say conventional non-gig “free” pizza delivery wherein the cost to the business of(poorly) paying drivers is recouped by elevated menu prices and there is still an expectation on the customer to tip the driver to make it sufficiently worthwhile for them.
if services are taking the tips for themselves when people assume it goes to the driver, that’s bad. that’s happened, yes. and fuck the service for doing it. bad pizza joints have done the same thing to drivers for years when they get credit card tips or tips online, too. that doesn’t make the “conventional pizza delivery economy” as a whole evil, it just makes those unethical companies assholes that should be avoided.
Yes, and the solution is to pay the business their money but stiff the worker so he quits and the business can extort some other poor sap down on his luck, that’ll teach those rich bastards who never knew the delivery guy existed to begin with! Definitely don’t change your habits and instead cook, pick up, or only order from places that do pay fairly, because that would inconvenience you, and strong opinions are only fun if they burden someone innocent who isn’t you!
I agree, of course if everyone quit like I did because otherwise I couldn’t afford both rent AND food, you wouldn’t be able to order your precious delivery. Thankfully for you there is a never ending supply of poor saps willing to be exploited by the business and you so they just replaced me with some other guy you can stiff and look down upon who gets paid even less base pay than I did! You really helped!
If you willingly participate in a system that makes you responsible for paying their wages, then yes it is. Participating in said system only up until the point where you are also in on exploitation of said worker for your benefit makes you in on scamming the worker with the owner. You and the owner are compatriots, not the worker in this set up, both jointly exploiting the worker from both ends, all because you don’t want to heat up nuggies yourself. You can’t pretend to take the high road on this one.
The purpose of tips has gone away in the US. You are supposed to tip after the delivery for a good service. Now you have to “tip” for a good service.
You have to pay their wages instead of the giant company that’s partially doing so already
If you have to tip to get someone to provide a service your already paying for then that is a bribe.
Call it a bribe then. For regular customers there is little difference.
Modern extortion.
Yes, vastly underpaid workers are stealing your money.
The point is that the company employing gig economy workers expects us to pay their wages and for our food.
well, yes. look, I’m not a fan of the exploitative “gig economy” either, but you are paying for two things that won’t ever be offered for free to you: (1) food to be prepared for you, and (2) the service of someone to transport it on your behalf. for the prior you pay the menu price. for the latter you pay service fees and tips. if you don’t want to pay extra (atop menu prices) to have someone bring you the food, don’t ask someone to bring you food for money.
the scummy part is not that you’re being made to pay for the services you’re requesting, it’s that the services sometimes lie about how the workers are being paid and how much the service actually costs by wrapping up the worker’s base pay (essentially) as a “tip”. yes. shitty.
but i’m not sure how this differs much from, say conventional non-gig “free” pizza delivery wherein the cost to the business of(poorly) paying drivers is recouped by elevated menu prices and there is still an expectation on the customer to tip the driver to make it sufficiently worthwhile for them.
if services are taking the tips for themselves when people assume it goes to the driver, that’s bad. that’s happened, yes. and fuck the service for doing it. bad pizza joints have done the same thing to drivers for years when they get credit card tips or tips online, too. that doesn’t make the “conventional pizza delivery economy” as a whole evil, it just makes those unethical companies assholes that should be avoided.
Seems like whoever’s underpaying them is the culprit, huh?
Yes, and the solution is to pay the business their money but stiff the worker so he quits and the business can extort some other poor sap down on his luck, that’ll teach those rich bastards who never knew the delivery guy existed to begin with! Definitely don’t change your habits and instead cook, pick up, or only order from places that do pay fairly, because that would inconvenience you, and strong opinions are only fun if they burden someone innocent who isn’t you!
The solution is to not work for people that won’t even pay minimum wage.
I agree, of course if everyone quit like I did because otherwise I couldn’t afford both rent AND food, you wouldn’t be able to order your precious delivery. Thankfully for you there is a never ending supply of poor saps willing to be exploited by the business and you so they just replaced me with some other guy you can stiff and look down upon who gets paid even less base pay than I did! You really helped!
I really did, if it made even one person get out of being exploited like that. It’s not my responsibility to pay their wages.
If you willingly participate in a system that makes you responsible for paying their wages, then yes it is. Participating in said system only up until the point where you are also in on exploitation of said worker for your benefit makes you in on scamming the worker with the owner. You and the owner are compatriots, not the worker in this set up, both jointly exploiting the worker from both ends, all because you don’t want to heat up nuggies yourself. You can’t pretend to take the high road on this one.