<story><title>Instacart and Amazon-owned Whole Foods are parting ways</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/13/instacart-and-amazon-owned-whole-foods-are-parting-ways/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robertAngst</author><text>You say this is a good thing, until you go to Europe and get treated terrible service.&lt;p&gt;I was seriously confused why our waters werent getting filled up, despite walking 10+ miles before noon. Or why the waiter wasnt coming to our table to take our order. Or why the waiter didn&amp;#x27;t check on us.&lt;p&gt;After sharing this story with locals, it seems their expectations are far less for restaurants.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have much of an opinion on how to pay waiters, but Italy did not impress me.</text></item><item><author>saidajigumi</author><text>Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon.  Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there&amp;#x27;s no tipping.  Workers are paid a living wage and have benefits (esp. in countries that didn&amp;#x27;t go with employer-supplied benefits in the wake of WWII).  They want no part of &amp;quot;tipping&amp;quot;.  Combine that with VAT-using countries, and it&amp;#x27;s delightful to look at a restaurant menu and realize there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; obfuscation about what the final bill will be.  Not to mention tipping as a vehicle for wage theft, and playing into a generally regressive compensation system.</text></item><item><author>lawnchair_larry</author><text>Do you tip pizza delivery, or do you say that you don’t tip fedex so you won’t tip pizza either? Arguably, pizza delivery drivers do even less work than Instacart people who have to shop on your behalf and wait in checkout lines etc.</text></item><item><author>MichaelApproved</author><text>&amp;gt; free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now&lt;p&gt;More like &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;. Amazon preselects $5 tip for the delivery. I don&amp;#x27;t have to tip the FedEx driver, why should I tip this delivery driver? It&amp;#x27;s not free if I&amp;#x27;m expected to tip.&lt;p&gt;Pay your workers a living wage and build it into the price.</text></item><item><author>timcederman</author><text>How bizarre that the article mentions Amazon Fresh but completely fails to mention that you can get free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now. I routinely order stuff from Whole Foods through Prime Now and get it just a few hours later, it&amp;#x27;s pretty awesome. I used to occasionally order Whole Foods via Instacart but haven&amp;#x27;t once since the acquisition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saidajigumi</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not familiar with Italy specifically, but note that service expectations differ broadly in the EU.  In many countries, customers &lt;i&gt;expect&lt;/i&gt; to be left alone until they signal the wait staff for something.  The American notion of staff that hovers over and&amp;#x2F;or badgers you constantly is largely absent.&lt;p&gt;In the countries I&amp;#x27;ve travelled to, I&amp;#x27;ve generally had excellent service, bearing the above in mind.</text></comment>
<story><title>Instacart and Amazon-owned Whole Foods are parting ways</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/13/instacart-and-amazon-owned-whole-foods-are-parting-ways/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robertAngst</author><text>You say this is a good thing, until you go to Europe and get treated terrible service.&lt;p&gt;I was seriously confused why our waters werent getting filled up, despite walking 10+ miles before noon. Or why the waiter wasnt coming to our table to take our order. Or why the waiter didn&amp;#x27;t check on us.&lt;p&gt;After sharing this story with locals, it seems their expectations are far less for restaurants.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have much of an opinion on how to pay waiters, but Italy did not impress me.</text></item><item><author>saidajigumi</author><text>Tipping is a weirdly American phenomenon.  Travel, for example, to the EU or other parts of the world where there&amp;#x27;s no tipping.  Workers are paid a living wage and have benefits (esp. in countries that didn&amp;#x27;t go with employer-supplied benefits in the wake of WWII).  They want no part of &amp;quot;tipping&amp;quot;.  Combine that with VAT-using countries, and it&amp;#x27;s delightful to look at a restaurant menu and realize there&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; obfuscation about what the final bill will be.  Not to mention tipping as a vehicle for wage theft, and playing into a generally regressive compensation system.</text></item><item><author>lawnchair_larry</author><text>Do you tip pizza delivery, or do you say that you don’t tip fedex so you won’t tip pizza either? Arguably, pizza delivery drivers do even less work than Instacart people who have to shop on your behalf and wait in checkout lines etc.</text></item><item><author>MichaelApproved</author><text>&amp;gt; free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now&lt;p&gt;More like &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;. Amazon preselects $5 tip for the delivery. I don&amp;#x27;t have to tip the FedEx driver, why should I tip this delivery driver? It&amp;#x27;s not free if I&amp;#x27;m expected to tip.&lt;p&gt;Pay your workers a living wage and build it into the price.</text></item><item><author>timcederman</author><text>How bizarre that the article mentions Amazon Fresh but completely fails to mention that you can get free delivery from Whole Foods via Prime Now. I routinely order stuff from Whole Foods through Prime Now and get it just a few hours later, it&amp;#x27;s pretty awesome. I used to occasionally order Whole Foods via Instacart but haven&amp;#x27;t once since the acquisition.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sitharus</author><text>In my country it&amp;#x27;s considered rude to interrupt people while they&amp;#x27;re talking or eating. We wouldn&amp;#x27;t want someone to come to the table without being asked. Unless you&amp;#x27;re at a dinner service often water isn&amp;#x27;t served, you&amp;#x27;re expected to get it yourself from the counter. In the major cities US-style service is more common and most locals find it annoying and just wave the server away.&lt;p&gt;The worst service I&amp;#x27;ve ever had was in Canada where they do tip, and I was rating that by the North American standards rather than my home country&amp;#x27;s. I still tipped the standard amount because I disagree with tipping, but he didn&amp;#x27;t seem incentivised.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s important to rate experiences by what the region is expecting, not by what you expect at home.</text></comment>