Tech related news and discussion. Link to anything, it doesn't need to be a news article.
Let's keep the politics and business side of things to a minimum.
No memes
I don't get this, why would they care if the tips option is provided at checkout. It would best to have 0% as the default, but as long as it's transparent and easy to change.
I never understood US tipping culture even after living there for several years. If you can't run a business (including paying your employees), then your business is not viable and should shut down.
I did DoorDash driving for a while and they typically only paid $1.50-$2.50 per delivery. The goal I always heard from experienced drivers was you shouldn’t take less than $1/mile for the delivery or it wouldn’t be worth your time and expenses. That meant the balance had to be paid upfront by the customer to make it worth someone’s time to deliver the order. My suggestion for customers was always to look up the distance to the restaurant and make sure the tip was at least as much as however many miles away the restaurant was.
It’s really disingenuous in the article that DoorDash and Uber are complaining about being forced to let people tip at checkout since that’s how the apps have worked anyway every time I’ve used them anyways. They complain about customers tipping fatigue and that tips should be a reward for excellent service and not a basic expectation, but that’s exactly how they’ve structured their business to operate and more generally how employers in the US have been abusing tips for decades.
These companies have been hiding where a lot of the money goes and try to improve margins by exploiting the drivers, and restaurants. I wonder if something with a more upfront billing process would attract customers, or people would leave because of the more obvious high costs? Actually tie the delivery cost to the distance from the business, and if people want to pay less they’ll have to wait for some other customers nearby to also order something and pool their fees to make it worth a driver’s time. But they’ll know that upfront, and a tip can actually be a tip.
Tips probably shouldn’t be allowed to offset an employer’s responsibility to pay employees in most situations.
My suggestion for customers was always to look up the distance to the restaurant and make sure the tip was at least as much as however many miles away the restaurant was.
Even after living in North America for decade, this kind of thing is just alien to me. I am not going to calculate the exact distance to the restaurant. What's next? Calculating the relative level of traffic? Quarterly inflation evaluation using a custom index relevant to the given segment group and regional price dynamics?
I did tip around 10%-15% percent in restaurants and closer to 10% for delivery (more for delivery if the weather was shit, I lived in norther part of the US). No way I am going to do 25% or 35% or whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I get it on some level, but the price is the price. Considering how much people (including commoners) would parrot random polemics about "free markets", I thought the complete inability to provide real prices was pretty funny.
And if you've lived in much poorer countries than the US, the arguments around North American tipping culture just sound hollow.
Not much to understand about it unfortunately. It’s just an easy way to offset labor costs from businesses to customers. Just more run of the mill greed
But why the opposition to having the tips at checkout? This does not conflict with the notion of offsetting labour costs.
In Europe tips can be added at checkout or give cash in the local equivalent of $1.25 and folks will be happy if you do it (it's definitely not required).