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Comment by cjhopman | Hacker News Reader

That controversy never made sense to me. Most restaurants in the US "effectively pocket the tips" in the same way. In fact, any servers that are being paid roughly minimum wage up to minimum wage + $5 could have their tips pocketed in the same way.

Here's a question for people who were so upset by this. Let's say you have a bunch of tipped employees that you directly pay $10/hour and with tips they average $20/hour. You have two problems though, (1) your employees complain that during some shifts they are making barely over their base pay and (2) potential new hires are worried that they won't make as much in tips as you say current employees make. The question is: would it be taking advantage of those employees to change the employment to include a guaranteed $15/hour minimum, for any shift where they make less than that you'd pay them extra to hit the minimum?

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It blows my mind how many people don't understand why what DoorDash did was bad.

The comparison to DoorDash isn't table service in a restaurant, it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver. Where does that cash go? The driver's pocket. That process & the cultural understanding of it has literally been around as long as the concept of tipping.

Here's the real question that answers why people are "upset". If you did a poll of 100 people ordering on DoorDash, and asked them "when you tip on your order, where does the money go", what do you think people would say? 99/100 of them would ABSOLUTELY say "to the driver" and that is everything that is wrong with what DoorDash did. I struggle to engage sincerely in argument with anyone claiming otherwise.

> If you did a poll of 100 people ordering on DoorDash, and asked them "when you tip on your order, where does the money go", what do you think people would say? 99/100 of them would ABSOLUTELY say "to the driver" and that is everything that is wrong with what DoorDash did.

How is that different from servers in a restaurant? If you asked that question of people who give a tip to their servers at a restaurant they would also say that that money goes to their server, despite the fact that the federally mandated earnings guarantee (assuming the restaurant doesn't have its own higher one) means that that money, effectively, might just be going to the restaurant.

> it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver

And would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?

>How is that different from servers in a restaurant?

I fail to see how that is relevant. I think the closest comparison to DoorDash is ordering delivery from an Italian restaurant – not driving to the restaurant, sitting down at a table and getting table service. And yes, I think many people are aware that it is common for kitchen staff to pool tips at a restaurant, in the same way that they know the same process doesn't exist for delivery drivers.

>would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?

I would have no problem with that, but if they have a button on their app that says "tip your driver" it had better all go to the driver.

> it is common for kitchen staff to pool tips at a restaurant

I'm not sure where you got the idea that that is what I was talking about?

Do you not understand what an earnings guarantee means in the context of a tipped job? It means that you have a base pay + tips. If those tips end up not meeting the earnings guarantee, the company will pay you extra to hit that guarantee. That effectively means that the first $x of your tips are going to the company to cover the earnings guarantee. That's what doordash (and most restaurants) are doing.

The US federal minimum wage laws require a minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Tipped employees only require a base rate of $2.13/hour but the employer must guarantee that they earn $7.25/hour w/ tips, if they make less, the employer must pay them the difference. Effectively, the first ~$5/hour of tips goes to the employer.

This practice is illegal in seven states including California.

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