Restaurants have to make up the difference for the whole pay period, not per-order, which means any individual tip goes 100% to the waiter. And restaurants expect that they don't have to make up the difference because waiter pay after tips is expected to exceed minimum wage. So the rule where the restaurant has to make up the difference is just the loophole that lets them get away with paying less than minimum wage in the first place.

Whereas DoorDash's model was set such that you had to tip over $10 for the dasher to see a single cent of it. This meant that nearly all tips went to DoorDash instead of to the dasher, because I have to imagine most orders don't have a >$10 tip on them. And this was calculated per-order instead of per pay period, which mean that, as a customer, your individual tip was going to the company instead of to the dasher.

Doordash iirc took the tips out of /every/ transaction not just the initial 5-10 dollars per hour (the difference between minimum wage and tipped minimum wage) like restaurants do so they were profiting from every tip. Restaurants only really get the benefit of the first couple tips given each hour and depending on the restaurant cost, the ratio of servers to tables and the turnover rate the first 2-4 tips of every hour likely cover the difference the restaurant is making with anything else going to the customer (I'd love to have some actual numbers here from servers but the math makes sense). So in general unless it's a slow time your tip probably actually goes to the serving staff instead of just benefiting the restaurant.

Exactly. I didn't really understand the outcry, unless people in the USA just don't understand fully how tipping works. It's exactly the same model that restaurants use.

Yes, it's the same. Ultimately the worker has two paymasters who also pay each other and money is fungible. The faux moralism is just the two parties -- corporate, and customer, jockeying for how to split the money the worker earns. And the poor worker doesn't even get a voice.

Generally though once a server has gotten a couple tables (2-4 maybe but it depends a lot on the local tipping culture and the restaurant) done all of the rest of the money tipped is all extra and unless it’s a really slow day most tips are going to the server. DoorDash applied their adjustment to every single order so unless a driver was tipped more than a certain amount (I’ve heard $10) they never received the tip.

Also there’s a decent amount of talk about how bad tipping is and talks about getting rid of it but it’s a culturally ingrained thing so it’s not going to go easily, especially as it benefits restaurant owners so they’re unlikely to change unless there’s a lot of social and business pressure to do so.

It's not a matter of agreement, it's a violation of federal labor law for people not involved in the service from taking any portion of a tip. Tony Xu was taking parts of tips to reduce the company's wage commitments.

Yes, but that's unethical enough to condemn, isn't it? I mean, I was personally horrified that the "tip" that DoorDash had been soliciting with that attractively placed button was in fact really a tip to the parent company and not the dasher. I feel defrauded, and would really like that tip money back.

Whether tips or regular wages are better or not is an endless argument, and it doesn't seem like dashers are particularly exploited relative to other gig economy jobs.

But still... that fake "tip" button was designed to exploit my emotional desire to fairly compensate low wage workers to goose DoorDash's revenue numbers, and that sucks.

Most people don't really get the contractor/employee split that all these companies take advantage of and even then the word TIP has certain implications. If I tip someone well I expect the worker to get more not for the company employing or contracting them to pay less, I want the money to go to the person not the company.

Even in the US where tips go against wages it's not so bad, generally the first tip or two will cover the difference and workers are probably doing way better than that. Doordash on the other hand applied the same thing to /every/ order.

It's going to be a sad day if the argument in court is that the customer is "tipping DoorDash" (and not the actual delivery contractor).

I don't think that justifies wage theft.