Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.
That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.
Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly? It’s the employer’s responsibility to pay their workers fairly. If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
You’ve got the wrong model. DoorDash is not an employer, and Dashers are not employees. Dashers are not assigned shifts, or expected to clock in and out at specific times. Dashers are free to refuse offers they don’t want to take.
DoorDash is a “broker”, not an employer. They attempt to connect a customer to a vendor and a Dasher. What you pay DoorDash is a brokerage fee, not a service charge. Your “tip” is not a tip: it is a bid for the Dasher’s delivery service. The Dasher is not obligated to serve you; if you want service, you need to offer payment for that service and find someone willing to provide it at that price.
Right…they are a middle man that only exists to extract money from other people’s work. Customers have to pay them for the privilege, restaurants have to pay them for the privilege, and then customers have to pay the driver to actually deliver it. Why anyone would use these services, let alone work for them, is beyond me…
Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?
Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism
"What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”
We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.
If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
Because it’s not my responsibility to subsidize your business. If a tip is required to get good service, then the question becomes how much of a tip required to get good service. It pits customers against workers, while you brush it off as just the cost of getting good service. But if people decide that the cost of your business plus a tip is too much, then no one will use your business. That’s capitalism…it works both ways. You can either decide to make less profit and pay your workers fairly without putting the onus onto your customers, or you can close the business. You are not entitled to exploit both your workers and your customers.
Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.
THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.
I’m talk about “you” figuratively, as in one of the middle-man businesses that only exist to make money off of other people’s work, not “you” literally.
Doordash and other such services merely a convenient way to connect restaurants to more delivery drivers instead of hiring their own. On the surface that’s a decent business model. In reality, it just exploits drivers and charges restaurants for the privilege, and then charges customers and asks for tips that don’t necessarily all go to the drivers. At some point though, customers are going to decide its too expensive, or in this case stop tipping which only results in worse service and complaints. It’s already happening. When real taxi services charge less for delivery, a service they use to provide before these fake taxi companies started, then the tides will turn. Unless Doordash can exploit their drivers more, in which case they risk losing drivers. That’s capitalism…your company is as much a customer as it is a service provider, but most companies refuse to accept that and instead exploit their workers. That’s why laws should exist to prevent that. That’s why we should demand those laws, instead of just subsidizing the wages of workers through the company that’s exploiting them in the first place.
I’m all for ending tipping culture. And a tip before service may not be a tip, but as long as this is how it’s set up, it’s the current way we must do things.
Just like if you want someone to do some handy work for you, you can go on Craigslist and say “need someone to do ‘x’. Will pay $150” and workers who search on there for jobs will decide whether or not it’s worth it for them to do the job. This job just so happens to be giving you food or a ride.
Right, and if a company can’t pay their workers enough, then workers are not obligated to work there. It is not my responsibility to ensure your workers are paid fairly, regardless of how things are currently set up.
A tip before service is not a tip. It’s coercion. Maybe we should consider adding regulation to this entire industry to ensure fair pay.
Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.
That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.
Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly? It’s the employer’s responsibility to pay their workers fairly. If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
You’ve got the wrong model. DoorDash is not an employer, and Dashers are not employees. Dashers are not assigned shifts, or expected to clock in and out at specific times. Dashers are free to refuse offers they don’t want to take.
DoorDash is a “broker”, not an employer. They attempt to connect a customer to a vendor and a Dasher. What you pay DoorDash is a brokerage fee, not a service charge. Your “tip” is not a tip: it is a bid for the Dasher’s delivery service. The Dasher is not obligated to serve you; if you want service, you need to offer payment for that service and find someone willing to provide it at that price.
Right…they are a middle man that only exists to extract money from other people’s work. Customers have to pay them for the privilege, restaurants have to pay them for the privilege, and then customers have to pay the driver to actually deliver it. Why anyone would use these services, let alone work for them, is beyond me…
Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism
We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.
It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
Because it’s not my responsibility to subsidize your business. If a tip is required to get good service, then the question becomes how much of a tip required to get good service. It pits customers against workers, while you brush it off as just the cost of getting good service. But if people decide that the cost of your business plus a tip is too much, then no one will use your business. That’s capitalism…it works both ways. You can either decide to make less profit and pay your workers fairly without putting the onus onto your customers, or you can close the business. You are not entitled to exploit both your workers and your customers.
Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.
THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.
I’m talk about “you” figuratively, as in one of the middle-man businesses that only exist to make money off of other people’s work, not “you” literally.
Doordash and other such services merely a convenient way to connect restaurants to more delivery drivers instead of hiring their own. On the surface that’s a decent business model. In reality, it just exploits drivers and charges restaurants for the privilege, and then charges customers and asks for tips that don’t necessarily all go to the drivers. At some point though, customers are going to decide its too expensive, or in this case stop tipping which only results in worse service and complaints. It’s already happening. When real taxi services charge less for delivery, a service they use to provide before these fake taxi companies started, then the tides will turn. Unless Doordash can exploit their drivers more, in which case they risk losing drivers. That’s capitalism…your company is as much a customer as it is a service provider, but most companies refuse to accept that and instead exploit their workers. That’s why laws should exist to prevent that. That’s why we should demand those laws, instead of just subsidizing the wages of workers through the company that’s exploiting them in the first place.
I’m all for ending tipping culture. And a tip before service may not be a tip, but as long as this is how it’s set up, it’s the current way we must do things.
Just like if you want someone to do some handy work for you, you can go on Craigslist and say “need someone to do ‘x’. Will pay $150” and workers who search on there for jobs will decide whether or not it’s worth it for them to do the job. This job just so happens to be giving you food or a ride.
Right, and if a company can’t pay their workers enough, then workers are not obligated to work there. It is not my responsibility to ensure your workers are paid fairly, regardless of how things are currently set up.