This worked as of 21:30 Eastern time on 6 December 2024.
This is normalizing tipping drivers and pretty soon it will be expected. Resist this enshittification.
It’s not a tip. Amazon is giving them the cash not you. It’s more like a bonus
For now
Expected? They’ll make it mandatory, and then lower the amount of wages they pay their drivers, pointing to the tips as justification.
If the future brings about a shift where delivery corporations reduce costs by outsourcing employee pay to the working class, then we must opt out of delivery companies bringing products to your door.
There will be a return of brick and mortar retail, or an opportunity for corporations to enter the market with new drive up delivery lockers where you can pick your shit up through a drive through window - McPackage (not sexual).
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies). I’d love minimising the time I need to be home, the concern of missing a delivery, a porch pirate stealing a package, something getting damaged or lost in transit, etc.
Edit: I’m aware you can pay for P.O. Boxes and parcel lockers from delivery companies, but they will become anachronistic. Expensive monthly fees, small lockers, and inconvenient because you have to find parking at your strip mall, walk in, wade through people, and get your stuff from a small area. I can see drive up package pickup (McPackage) taking off if tipping your delivery drivers becomes the norm.
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies).
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.
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I would argue that shopping for a person is different than straight delivery. Depending on the shopping, I could be convinced that tipping could be appropriate.
Openly promoting the fact that they underpay their drivers, for a limited time.
Asking honestly, respectfully, and in good faith - is there a downside to doing this? Edit: I mean, is there a downside to rewarding the driver via this promotion.
Yes, it undermines the idea that drivers deserve a living wage and is just Amazon dipping their toes into shifting their drivers into something closer to ‘ride share’ style independent contractors who primarily get their income from tips.
Short term benefit for long term problems.
I mean, 100% the drivers should be being paid more and the entire system is fundamentally broken.
In the here and now though, where I can’t do anything to fix anything even if I entirely stop using Amazon forever right this moment, giving someone a random $5 that they wouldn’t otherwise have is a good thing.
Yea if you’re going to use a bad service might as well help while you can. It’s like going to a restaurant then not tipping because it encourages owners. They don’t give a fuck cause they still get your money
Short term benefit for long term problems.
slippery slope fallacy
Clicking a button that gives someone money at no expense to you isn’t causing the issue you’re worried about, it’s at worst symptomatic of the broken system that might lead to your concern.
Not all slippery slopes are fallacies.
Ever notice that all the counter service places are leaning into tipping because it became popular with coffee shops?
Sure. And if Amazon ever asks us to tip delivery people with our own money we shouldn’t because that’s bullshit.
That being bullshit has no bearing on if it’s good to click the button that gives someone $5 at no expense to you out of their employers pocket.
If a counter service place has a button I could press to give them $5 of the stores money, I would press it every time. That’s not a tip because it’s not my money supplementing the employees wages.
Technically youre right, but would you say the same if Putin started handing out band-aids to ukrainians who just lost their families?
… What? That’s such a non-sequitor that I’m honestly not sure if you replied to the wrong thing or something.
I can’t say that I would say the same thing in an entirely different situation with nothing to do with the other.
Its a similar situation. You ‘cant do anything about anything’ and handing out band-aids is ‘better than nothing’. Would ‘giving someone a band-aid is a good thing’ be your stance in that situation or would you find it rather inappropriate?
They’re not similar situations at all. For one, it’s an absurd difference in scale. Whatever your opinions of Amazon delivery driver working conditions and pay, it’s in no way comparable to “an invading army murdered their family”.
Second, whether or not I should push a button to give someone $5 with no obligation on their part is a different situation from getting a bandaid for a murdered family on the whim of the responsible party.
If you could push a button and a random person somewhere in the world gets $1 million, would you push the button?
Plenty of untipped jobs are seen as being undeserving of a living wage, though, so I don’t follow your logic.
“Yes, we could be paying our drivers an extra 5 dollars, we just choose not to, lol.”
Why would they do it if they can have you do it?
You’re not paying, you’re clicking a button to have Amazon give $5 of their money to the driver.
They could have just given a bunch of drivers $5, but then they wouldn’t make a bunch of customers think Amazon isn’t too bad.So you should push the button, but also pointedly continue to think badly of Amazon.
Is there an option for “Request Amazon to pay drivers decently and improve working conditions?”
Nope, just a “illegally suppress unions” button.
“At no cost to you… for now”
For some time now I’ve been very successful at not buying anything from Amazon.
I’ve been considering this as my New Years Resolution. I’m ashamed that I might be too weak to go through with it. The convenience is just so…manipulative and infantilizing. I am perfectly capable of buying anything I need from a physical store front.
Yeah, buying from physical stores also helps your local economy. Otherwise there’s eBay and Aliexe (spelling?)
Try sorting results by ‘price low to high’ and then watch as it completely ignores you - no - laughs in your fucking face - as it gives you results in whatever goddamn order it so desires.
It might make it easier to give it up if you can fully realize that Amazon is now 100% in the business of fucking you over.
Worked for me
Amazon drivers (the ones in budget or Amazon cans, not flex in personal cars) do okish. I just quit working for a third party company Amazon uses to shield them from liability and unions because it’s miserable work but the pay was $22.50 which isn’t too bad. The workload is crazy, it’s all rush rush rush, and they don’t care about you at all though so fuck them and Amazon. The drivers would appreciate the tip, they’re generally hardworking and decent people.
My friend delivered for Amazon for awhile and he had a regular delivery of 50 pounds of dog food that he had to carry up several flights of stairs. I was thinking about him, and all the times in my life when an unexpected fiver would have been useful, so I’m glad you commented.
Your comment reads like you wrote it bouncing down a bumpy road and had to post it quick before you went off the cliff.
Ha, sounds like you might have delivered in rural areas like I did.
I thought this was a shitpost but I tried it and it worked. What a weird way to hide a tip.
Aww, that’s sweet, Bezos is paying these personally, right?
Right??
Done. Two seconds. 2/3 hrs pay to them. Do it you assholes.
Didn’t say anything about giving $5 :/
This happened to my bestie just now when I screencapped that it had worked for me and told him about it.
I wonder what the difference is? Maybe its regional?
Edit: He figured his out. He placed the order through Amazon but it was delivered via USPS. Maybe that’s the issue?
Hmm, I don’t know. The last purchase was a book my mom bought, it’s possible that’s the issue. I’ll try again next time we order something to make sure.
Thanks!
IIRC when Amazon Fresh was a thing, they were encouraging tips, but they were caught using the tips to cover some of the hourly wages.
Texas schools need $X funding. The Texas Lottery was meant to add $Y dollars to education. The lottery was sold to the public as meaning schools would be funded to the tune of $(X + Y) each year.
Instead, the state funds $(X - Y). Instead of supplementing education funds, the lottery supplants it. And it’s the exact same thing with tipping culture.
(I’d bet this is how most state lotteries which fund education operate.)
Worked for me
Just tried it and it worked. 9:30 PST.
nah fuck amazon.
Haven’t had a delivery in 14-days, didn’t work. Bummer. I like my guy.
