> The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy?
It's not OK, and it's part of the reason why I don't often go to restaurants even though I could afford to eat at one every night.
There is one difference, though, which is that restaurant staff are well aware of the nature of their pay.
Most DoorDash drivers didn't realize that they were being gypped. I know this because, when I was driving for GrubHub, I would sometimes bump into DoorDash drivers and I would ask them about DoorDash's pay model. Most didn't have a clue that they were getting tipped but that the tip was disappearing into the pockets of DoorDash. I'm sure that DoorDash had something about that in 6 pt font somewhere, but not everyone will read or even comprehend that. Unless the customer asks if you got the tip, there was no way for a driver to even know if they had a tip when that tip did not exceed their base pay. At least restaurant workers know that there are tips and can see the full amount. Until this came out, a lot of drivers considered DoorDash to be supplementary because the customers were "stingy", when in fact that may not have been the case.
But no, I do not ask my favorite restaurants their pay policy. Perhaps I should.
EDIT: Another key difference between restaurant workers and food delivery app drivers is that customers of DoorDash almost always tip ahead of time, so it's not as if the driver can do much if anything to improve their chances of getting a bigger tip. With traditional tipping, it's implied that an advantage in being paid mostly in tips was that better service could equate to more pay. DoorDash a few years ago was taking advantage of people's common understanding of what it means to tip someone and keep both prices and costs down, with the driver being the one to get screwed and not even realize it.