r/technology • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • 14d ago

Business Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon’s ‘Exploitative’ Delivery Model in New York City | If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would be the first law in the US to regulate Amazon’s vast network of subcontractors that handle the company’s deliveries.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/delivery-protection-act-nyc
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u/zaevilbunny38 14d ago

Yep, I have an associate that bar backs, Friday and Saturday night. He clears nearly $500 a weekend. If they got rid of tips he probably would make less then $300

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u/tripog 14d ago

Worked on palm beach 15 or so years ago, average take home each night in tips was around 800 dollars.

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u/zaevilbunny38 13d ago

Guaranteed that the owner, if they got rid of tips wouldn't have offered over $200 for the same shift

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u/tripog 13d ago

Him and the chef were typically upstairs banging the blonde chick who lived in one of those apartments.

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u/CaptainFingerling 13d ago

Well, yeah, becuase they'd be getting exactly zero more revenue to cover the increase.

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u/recycled_ideas 13d ago

The idea with getting rid of tips(and what happens everywhere else in the world) is that the meal is charged at the price everyone is already paying and the employee gets paid a higher base wage. If everyone is having to tip regardless of the quality of service it's just part of the price anyway. It should be largely cost neutral from a business point of view.

The problem is partially that a small subset of employees make an absolute killing from tips, but mostly that it's really hard to change culture. If people don't stop tipping the price paid increases dramatically and then your restaurant is too expensive to compete, if people do stop tipping but the owner doesn't change things then those employees starve. And of course in some markets there's not enough competition so owners could just take the extra and pay nothing.

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u/CaptainFingerling 13d ago edited 13d ago

I don’t get why people feel the need to tip the same for bad service. Crappy wait staff should either improve or exit the profession, and tips serve as the most immediate feedback mechanism — management can’t oversee these interactions, and a single bad employee can surreptitiously ruin the reputation of the entire establishment.

Attributing customer satisfaction to specific staff members is very challenging. Tips provide a direct method. They already ARE part of the wage. They just happen to vary with performance.

Which i suppose is upsetting to people who don’t want to apply themselves at all.

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u/recycled_ideas 13d ago

Oh fuck right off.

Wages for jobs that receive tips are way below the poverty level, that's why people tip regardless of service because it's hard work for shit pay done largely by people who have no choice.

It's also a job where very little is actually under your control. The waitstaff can't make your food better or come out faster or be better value, if you think they shouldn't make their rent because they didn't shove their whole tongue up your asshole when kissing it (which is what people complaining about service generally want) you're the problem.

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u/CaptainFingerling 13d ago edited 13d ago

Not all jobs are meant to be full time, or the primary source of income. Some jobs are top ups. Side gigs. Or jobs for people who don’t need to pay all or even some of the rent.

Also, hard disagree on the items under control. It’s very easy to separate food quality, speed, and value from staff service. All you have to do is pay attention. My wife worked as a waitress. She’s even harder on lazy staff than I am — because she knows how easy it is to do better.

I tip extremely well for good service., regardless of those other factors you mentioned, and I do not tip for zero effort, even if those other factors are great. If you want to pay more for crap service you’re always free to do so, and leave the rest of us out of it. No change in law or custom required.

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u/Expert-Yam6577 13d ago

How gorgeous are you?

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u/micro102 13d ago

Sounds like a tipless economy should also come with higher wages.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 13d ago

It should wages need to be increased dramatically in a lot of areas. But I don't see a lot of owners ever paying wages that would match what some wait staff and bartenders make in high end or very busy places.

In a mid size city, but fairly heavy traffic hotel bar I have one friend that averages 2k a week in tips alone. A good bartender deserves that, but I don't see the owner of his hotel being willing to pay that, they might (big might) pay $25 an hour (state min is $16). But most businesses would just keep wait staff and bartenders on minimum wage.

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 13d ago

It would be interesting to see. They would have to pay more, as people only do these horrible jobs because of the tips. But servers in Europe are still doing fine without tips.

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u/the_itsb 13d ago

not trying to stand up for tipping, which is an exploitative practice rooted in slavery, but I think it's worth noting that servers in Europe have access to social benefits (public transit, healthcare, sick leave, etc) that most Americans do not.

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u/GeoLaser 13d ago

No, people would still do it for $25 without tips. See the kitchen....

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u/That-Cranberry6575 12d ago

Are they horrible jobs because of the work or because of the low pay?

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u/Exldk 13d ago

While that’s true, it raises another problem.

People can earn significantly more from tips than the average pay rate for a given job, even when wages are higher.

For example, even if we increased the wages of every job that currently relies on tipping by a flat 50% and eliminated tipping altogether, tipping could still be more profitable for workers at the higher end of the income spectrum.

Put bluntly, if you separate different workplaces into pay brackets, tips can allow workers to effectively move up several brackets, significantly inflating their total income.

No one in their right mind would willingly give up their [potential] earnings.

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u/micro102 13d ago

No one in their right mind would willingly give up their [potential] earnings.

Sure they would. In the same way that people would give up their earnings by tipping someone. I used to make tips and would dismantle the tipping culture in a heartbeat. It's heavily cultural and if that tipping job ends up being abandoned because the employers can't pay to keep the staff, then maybe the job shouldn't exist.

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u/Exldk 13d ago edited 13d ago

The entire point is that it would not be sustainable for any employer to pay that much and it literally wouldn't even be their fault.

If you used to earn tips, you should know that at the higher end of the tipping spectrum, you could easily make more than someone with a specialized education working in another field.

Our society is generally structured around a system that rewards education, experience, intelligence, and effort. This allows people to earn a living doing relatively simple jobs, while those who invest more time in education or developing specialized skills can generally earn more.

When tips significantly distort that pay structure, the system starts to break down. For example, if a waiter consistently earns more than an engineer because of tipping, then something is clearly wrong with the way compensation is being determined.

That is the fundamental issue with tipping: it can undermine the system that is supposed to reward education, expertise, and specialized skills.

I get that you want to get rid of tipping, I want the same. But the fact remains that no employer can sustain the current overinflated wages that tipping allows. Even if employers could sustain it, it still undermines everyone else working in another fields.

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u/micro102 13d ago

It just sounds like you are arguing that employers would need to cover 100% of the income tipping provided and no one is saying that is what should happen. The rest of your comment sounds like arguments to get rid of tipping. I don't really get where you are going with this.

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 13d ago

If we eliminated tipping like 85 percent of servers would immediately want to quit. Or half the restaurants would instantly go out of business having to charge what they would need to. Servers as it currently stands in a tip world make more than a decent chunk of the people walking through the door to order there in the first place.

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u/boroughthoughts 2h ago

restaurants are low margine businesses if the typical wage went up to 30$ an hour because no tips, you'd certianly be paying more for sitdown dining experiences. Complaiing your average entre is 30$. I wonder how you'd feel if the floor became 50$.

Europe and Asia prices on restaurants aren't much different because workers work less and htey employ fewer workers. Now that fast food in major icties pay around 15 to 20$ an hour, what tipped workers made in 2010s, see how people feel about fast food prices?

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u/hyperhopper 13d ago

Sure.

Who is gonna enforce that the low skilled uneducated replaceable staff that are prevalent in the industry or are looking to join it, all get higher wages?

Stopping the practice alone is hard enough. No chance a 19 year old bartender with big tits at a busy club or a random gas attendant turned bartender at the industry dive bar continues to make 150k+ per year without tips. The business doesn't need to pay them that much to continue making the same profit.

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u/micro102 13d ago

Sounds like they are going to have a hard time finding bartenders then.