Another way to look at it is that companies are making it easier to underpay their workers by offloading the responsibility for seeing that they're fairly compensated to their customers.

Repeated studies have shown that tipping is inherently discriminatory, with people of color faring worse than, say, conventionally "pretty" blonde women.

In this case, the workers don't even get the one benefit of tipping that wait staff do, namely, cash that can go largely untaxed.

What's happening here is that companies are setting a new normal that lets them not only avoid the cost of employees by calling their workers "independent contractors," they're even avoiding the cost of paying them a fair wage at all.

This isn't about guilt, it's about service workers being hurt by basic concepts like fair and equitable pay, benefits and stability being replaced by a gig economy where their take-home pay is subject to the whims of patrons' moods.