It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective.
I'm more upset about this line from Instacart:
> We include tips in the calculation [of pay for deliveries] so that you can get a more accurate picture of what your earnings will be after completing a batch.
This is incredibly dishonest. They're arguing with a straight face that they're doing you a favor by smoothing your earnings from an unpredictable (for example) $8-$50 per hour down to a more reliable $8-$9 per hour.
This is actually the same argument the US government advances in favor of its sugar tariff. Sure, it raises the price of sugar by 200% on average, but it protects us from the awful unpredictability of the world sugar price.
First, restaurant staff always know ahead of time if they have to share tips.
And their hourly compensation, as ridiculously low as it may be, is never adjusted to compensate for higher than normal tips.
And, finally, in most restaurants the tip pool is also split up with bussers, bartenders, and hosts who don't always make tips of their own, but still contribute to the overall experience.
Yet somehow the system only ever seems to work in one direction. I once had to pay $20 after working an 8-hour shift before leaving home under threat of termination (right-to-work state) because of the two tables I had that night, one was a giant party that didn't tip me at all and the other ran out on his $20 meal while I was taking care of other duties in the back. Somehow my responsibility, of course.
This varies by state. Google "server wage" and your blood will boil. It's illegal in WA, though — servers make standard minimum wage and employers can't take servers' tips.
The third point is also correct, but in that case I think it supports the idea that the tipper is being defrauded when it happens.
In that case at least the staff get your tip. In this case Instacart is taking it for themselves.
Absolutely. Thought its definitely more pernicious to find out the restaurant owner was keeping the tips.
The notion that you should overpay your own taxes to solve this is just bewildering.
