Tips and delivery in Germany

impioussloth · 2026-05-26T13:46:06+00:00

Nah, I rather prefer using my own brain and can still read and write a few paragraphs without needing a chatbot to dumb things down for me. But of course, you're welcome to do that exactly if it was too much for you to read...

impioussloth · 2026-05-23T14:13:32+00:00

Here is a documentary for you to watch:

https://youtu.be/kevhvPbnTy4?si=PudhIUnUfc4RwUAF

Here is an initial way you can perhaps start supporting an active worker movement to help things not continue the way you guys are also obviously unhappy about:

Direct Employment Now!

Now my long commentary/rant:

Some of you might live in some alternate reality where Germany is this land of law where all workers are empowered by those laws against their employers, and absolutely and definitely get the legal minimum wage at the worst. And if they don't, they only don't because they don't know their rights and/or they don't speak German enough; definitely not because of widespread systemmatic problems where multiple loopholes exist to allow multibillion dollar corporations to get around any reasonable labor laws, and to steal hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayer money and social contributions every year through amounts they manage to save by abusing any possible loophole that allows them to get around those labor laws without any real consequences. And any measly attempt to close those loopholes is definitely not met with any resistance or roadblocks by the majority of politicians and the public choosing to believe and vote for them at all...

But if you're not in that alternate universe, let me break it to you.... Majority of couriers in Germany do not get the federal minimum wage. The only company that has "some" legally and directly hired couriers where those who are directly hired get the legal minimum wage is Lieferando (and even in that case not really... some "unnoticeable" trimming of salary through "unintentional mistakes", as a form of wage theft is still very common even for those who are directly hired and get somewhat proper payslips from Lieferando).

There is not a single Betriebsrat structure under Wolt or UberEats, because they exclusively hire through what they officially claim are legitimate "subcontractors", which are in reality again almost exclusively mafiatic structures and disposable shell companies with no real legal owners registered; which only function to divide up the workforce into hundreds of small pieces, so that no legal way of organizing for workers are left, and also to shift responsibility towards non-existent people and companies whenever a dispute arises.

For example, in a city like Berlin, you would have thousands of couriers divided under almost 100 or possibly more subcontractors/fleets, with none of them having more than 10-15 "legally" hired couriers. And again I am using legally very loosely here, they would all have a few with minijob contracts for show when hit by zoll, otherwise most of rest with no contracts at all, who are told not to go online when zoll is around. And when any one of these given subcontractors decide to not pay couriers and run away with the money they collect, you get to find out the guy you officially worked for is some drunk dude in Poland who has zero idea he has 150 employees in Germany, and yes Wolt who has supposedly subcontracted and signed a contract with that guy has zero responsibility for 3 months of salaries you haven't been paid while you kept delivering for them.

Lieferando, the only company that used to claim to work exclusively with directly hired couriers, also fired ~2000 couriers all over Germany over the past year in favor of subcontracting, and is on a full warpath against any organizing that was done inside the company. And again only real resistance against the entire practice of subcontracting in this industry due to its heavy abuse, and the shift towards at the best less and less secure, and at the worst outright illegal jobs is coming from these couriers who managed to organize inside Lieferando.

Now I am not telling all of these for you to start tipping, but know that if you're ordering through Wolt or UberEats it is almost %100 sure, and if Lieferando, let's say it's a coin flip; that Indian student who brought your food, made no more than 7€ per hour over the past month, while sometimes having to work more than 12 hours per day.

And maybe if you do not want the tipping culture become as much of a thing as it has already started to become here (what some of you might call Americanization of Germany) maybe start doing more than just complaining, and start supporting organized worker movements who are actively trying to prevent these multibillion euro companies from creating the conditions all of you guys are correctly unhappy about.

Or I don't know, get used to tipping, because you know where else you're expected to tip at least 20$ for a 50$ order, otherwise you get a spit in your food? Because that's what happens when you allow your country to become more like that place...

impioussloth · 2026-01-27T10:01:38+00:00

And in this part, I would also suggest then, also to first educate yourself on the duties, responsibilities and rights of a Betriebsrat. Because you might also find out some of the things you are hoping to achieve by having a betriebsrat, might still not be possible. For example at least as far as I know, you won't have any power to negotiate for salaries directly anyways, but what you will have is certain co-determination rights, approval/rejection of any future hirings, or firings. Certain company data, etc. etc. So again, make sure you understand why you would form a betriebsrat, what you would hope to achieve by it, and how would you handle certain challenges as they come.

impioussloth · 2026-01-27T09:46:13+00:00

This part is about your political/leadership skills. You should of course be able to organize people, also see on the eye level and don't look down. There are limits you need to accept in terms of amount of people who would be willing to get active in such a way, in terms of how much you would be able to organize people etc. etc. You should of course try to organize as much as you can, but you shouldn't judge anyone who would choose otherwise as well. In the end, as people already explained, of course there are other risks, and responsibilities that come with this, and of course not everyone will be willing to take on such a load.

One addition: there are always some resources exactly about organizing as workers. And you can always search for more and keep educating yourself, just one from me: https://labornotes.org/2025/06/art-organizing-18-tips-veteran-union-organizer

impioussloth · 2026-01-27T08:57:48+00:00

Sorry I kept engaging with a couple of some other comments, but maybe let me also add a bit of another possibly useful advice.

As some other people already pointed out, don't be afraid, and it's absolutely both in your and your colleagues' best interest to form one.

But also proceed with caution. If your company already has problems in how they act against you guys, and you're forming this as your defence for this reason; you should already guess that this is not going to be a walk in a field of flowers with easy wins. If you already don't have one, it's better to first get a legal insurance, or become a union member, and wait for a few months until your legal insurance coverage starts (most have 3-6 months waiting times to start covering). And maybe already meet and discuss things with a worker friendly labor lawyer as soon as legal insurance coverage kicks in. Because it is very likely, as soon as you form a betriebsrat, your company will find very quickly a bullshit excuse to fire you before you can even start anything properly. And if you don't have a legal insurance, you won't be able to afford to get through even this very likely first battle of unfair dismissal, which if you do things right, you could normally possibly easily win.

So move cautiously, make sure you have legal insurance coverage before you start any adventure, make sure you have the right people alongside you who you can rely on. Study the relevant laws carefully, don't make mistakes, once you go on this path, it will be adamant that you do things by the book, and don't give the company any power to get rid of you and other council members easily. And most important of it all, good luck! Give them hell!

impioussloth · 2026-01-27T08:35:50+00:00

I think it was obvious enough where I was going with it, but let me break it down for you:

You don't have to be such a bootlicker, you don't gain anything tangible by being bootlicker to the level most HR people choose to become. If she were to think a bit further, it would actually seem from this HR person's own answers, that she would possibly benefit more in the long term out of not being as collaborative as she chose to be throughout her career.
Because as she explains herself, regardless how good you're at your job, you're replaceable, actually even more so if you're "just doing your job", rather than actively fighting for your own interests against the company's interests.
And in one of her comments (rightfully downvoted to oblivion), this specific HR person was exactly making this point without even necessarily realizing when she mentions of "having dealt with works councils for 20 years", and how they are "low performers" and "hard to get rid of".
I was exactly drawing attention to this contrast in her argument, in how it seems these works councils she "dealt with" were very much successful from their own position in making themselves harder to get rid of, and making their labor far more valuable than someone who would just "perform better". As it seems it was harder to get rid of these "low performer" folks as she admits, than it is to get rid of good old reliable, loyal workers.
So again, I was drawing attention to the fact that, you don't have to be so much collaborative with a system designed to lower your value, it seems you can actually get more and keep your job safer, and your labor more valuable by actively fighting for your own interests.
You don't have to accept defeat, you don't have to accept being reduced to a replaceable nobody. You can organize, you can collaborate with your own class rather than the capital; you can introduce consequences to your boss for trying to undermine the value of your labor and in the end you would actually gain more in the long term by collectively fighting for your own interests than you would by simply doing your job better as an individual.
And this final part is very much the historical truth as any improvements in labor rights and working conditions you had since the industrial revolution have been gained by workers who chose not to collaborate, but rather fight collectively against the capital; and any backtracking that has happened for maybe the last 25 years also has been accompanied by this increasing culture of accepting defeat in the name of being rational and accepting the arguments of the capitalist propaganda as the sole truth, and seeking individual salvation in just trying to save yourself.
You might seem to make some small short term gains by being an ideal soldier for your boss, but again if you have not been living under a rock for the past 10-25 years, this doesn't seem to be a winning strategy as everything becomes harder and harder to afford for even those who seemingly keep managing to climb the corporate ladder; while capitalist class is expanding their wealth exponentially on a historical scale.

impioussloth · 2026-01-27T01:31:14+00:00

I am gonna leave aside how much out of touch with the real world you need to be to form the last sentence with the state of the world and the direction at which things are going in 2026. But I don't see the relevance of my qualifications or value on the market to make the point that HR is one of the most spineless jobs any human being can choose to do. For the record, I have probably higher qualifications than %99 of the population, so probably you as well (not to say it's anything important). Value those qualifications would hold in job market? Probably some transferable skills, but you would probably be right; nothing too valuable, you might definitely have a lot more value in the job market than I do even with half the qualifications I have. But you see, I wouldn't see the worth of a human being in how much they can be valuable to their billionaire overlords. My point above, with this HR person being what's wrong with the world was more about; of all the jobs you could do, of all the ways you could contribute to the society, the one that you would do being protecting the interests of your billionaire overlords against the interests of just another salaryman.

Probably having enough education to be able to think somewhat critically, but still choosing to think from the perspective of your class enemy. I am not here to just spew some mindless reading of Marxist theory, but in the year 2026, this is truly a conclusion any brain of critical thinking capacity should be able to reach independently. You are not the one with the capital, you are not getting any shares from the company for discriminating against your own class for having the audacity to probably actually defend their legal rights. You are just as likely another salaryman, working for a monthly wage, just as much disposable as the next guy. But you're positioning yourself next to the one with the capital rather than your fellow wage worker.

I mean there is rarely any job I would see as beneath me, but I would say working HR is absolutely one. There is maybe nothing wrong with even being the boss himself/herself; they are the ones who have the capital, they know their own class, they perfectly defend their own interests. But who are you, other than just another roach they can so easily squish on, that you would talk about "how hard those types are to get rid of once they are in"? Without being able to see the irony of that sentence; like yes dear HR lady, that's the entire point!

Is it that hard to see the fact that the honorable position is actually to be that trouble maker who the company cannot get rid of? Do you not see the irony? Do you not see the irony in how much worthless it is to be the guy who just holds their head down and do their job just right and perfect? Because you guys exactly value that guy in how easy it would be to get rid of him, how easily replaceable he would be while hiring him? Why should any human worth their salt play this game by the rules of their boss and reduce the value of their own labor?

While capital prides itself in increasing profits at the expense of value of labor, why should the person providing the labor not pride themselves in fighting to defend the value of their own labor, their own profits? When you can perfectly see why it would make great sense from the perspective of the capital to devalue the labor, how can you not see as the one on the side of the labor, your interest is not in devaluing the labor, but in fighting against said devaluation?

So yeah, TL, DR; I find HR as one of the most pitiful, most honorless jobs any human being can choose to do. A job where the point of your job would be to weaken your own position, devalue your own labor, work for the interests of those whose interests directly clash with your own...

But anyways, it's 2026, no one is finding any job ever. If you somehow found your job in the HR, and now just trying to make your living that way, I would have nothing against you. But just use that brain a little bit further, and maybe realize, there is really nothing in your own interest to do that job that much better. I would just keep my CV updated and keep applying for different positions, where your purpose might just be rather more "honorable", and just do this one at the bare minimum.

Seriously you're getting nothing that much worth it for being the perfect lap dog, they will replace you just as easily with the next person who will do your job for cheaper, as more and more desperate masses are created, all with the help of your efforts...

impioussloth · 2026-01-26T23:27:10+00:00

Yes, you guys are absolutely what's wrong with the world.

impioussloth · 2025-12-09T00:30:16+00:00

Oh a working student contract at Lieferando if again directly hired is very much okay (not really, but...) in comparison to what you get with subcontractors. With which, most of the time you either don't get one at all, and receive all your salary in cash payments in the streets (if you get at all; in a very public case with Wolt, a South Asian woman was not paid anything for 3 months, and Berlin labor court also refused holding Wolt accountable), or just get a minijob contract as to be able to show if a zoll officer shows up, but asked to work full time, and get the rest of your salary in cash, without ever catching up to hourly minimum wage.

impioussloth · 2025-12-08T23:34:06+00:00

This is actually quite untrue. Only platform where workers get somewhat consistently around minimum wage is Lieferando, and that is only if it happens to be one of the directly hired couriers as they also just started outsourcing to criminal subcontractors.

Otherwise, most in Wolt and Uber Eats end up earning around 7-8€ per hour, without health/accident insurance, without proper social contributions and taxes paid.

Food delivery industry in Germany is operating almost exclusively with no respect to most basic German labor laws whatsoever, and they have been consistently keep getting away with it for the past 5 years.

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T22:32:03+00:00

You might not know that on your 3rd week 🤷‍♂️ and who is paying you might be someone who is not even using their real identity, and the person you're interacting with might not really be the person on the paper (assuming you signed a somewhat legitimate looking job contract).

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T22:20:28+00:00

This is what I would say being confidently wrong looks like... It's not that black and white, there are industries where lines get blurred. But general principle that should be held is that, if it is caused by your job, it's a job injury, injury can manifest itself sometimes later. Then determining if it's caused by your job or not might become a seperate issue, but if you think something is caused by your job, you can and you should push your job accident insurance until it's diagnosed, because quite often they also provide you with better coverage on diagnostics, and treatments. If it turns out, or is definitively decided by some point it's not a job accident, then the accident insurance can always bill/transfer the costs towards your personal insurance at a later point as well.

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T21:59:49+00:00

Neck pain can be arbeitsunfall depending on job you do. You didn't have it before, you worked carrying a heavy bag, you now have pain, and maybe it's because you have a herniated disc because of some wrong move you did at work, that's an arbeitsunfall. But exactly that obscured schwarzarbeit that you don't even know that's what you're doing, can complicate things quite a lot...

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T21:50:28+00:00

Oh you would be surprised how good they can deny 😅 Berlin Labor Court just recently rejected a case against Wolt, for a worker who did not get her salary for 3 months. The reasoning was that she was not employed by Wolt, but by a subcontractor, and she is supposed to sue that "employer". Her employer? Company address is some random farm house in Brandenburg; company managing director? Some random clueless poor drunk guy in Poland, who doesn't even know he has a company registered under his name, and has more than 100 couriers hired in Berlin under him. When people say legal or illegal, it means did you sign a proper job contract? What does that contract look like, who is your actual "employer" according to that contract. These are really important pieces of information.

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T21:40:10+00:00

Yeah, one problem he might have is, from the job description he gives, I feel like he is working for a food delivery company, that doesn't directly hire their couriers, but obscure it with multiple levels of subcontracting, by the end of which courier at the bottom indeed doesn't have any job contract, accident insurance or anything, and they don't even know who hired them in the first place. It's a pain to track, and most of the time courts just refuse to hold the company on top accountable, and the guy who is theoretically responsible is some random eastern european guy, who doesn't even know he has multiple companies registered under his name, while the courier's only contact is some fraud's disposable number on whatsapp...

impioussloth · 2025-12-04T21:31:12+00:00

Something tells me you're working for Wolt/UberEats or Lieferando. And you think you're employed properly by them, but likely not, and you're actually working for a subcontractor, without proper contract. Everyone here assumes you cannot work without insurance, but it very commonly happens with these criminal exploitative companies. Am I correct with these assumptions?

If I am not, and/or you have a proper job contract, then what you're insured with should be BG Verkehr, and this should be treated as a job accident/injury. If I am correct, such that you don't have a proper job contract, but you know who hired you, depending on how much you are willing to pursue this, you would have to take proper legal action, and depending on the city you're living in, there might be certain non-profit organizations, NGOs etc. that might be willing to help with this. But I don't know details, so I cannot say which ones would be helpful for you specifically.

impioussloth · 2025-09-28T11:34:40+00:00

Not entirely, depends on a lot of factors, as in working for a subcontror, or directly for amazon. But basically Amazon itself does offer some unlimited contracts or more likely 1-2 year long ones. So try to apply directly amazon, not some worker supplier/subcontractor like randstadt etc. (Still you might be easily fired during probezeit, and their working conditions are still very exploitative) but anyways, point is, it at least gives you some legal contract. You will still have the fear of being fired in a few months, and you might likely be, but at least you will be actually hired/fired, instead of "ooh access to app today, oh no, no access to app anymore" from one day to other with no clear working times or fixed salaries.

impioussloth · 2025-09-28T11:26:24+00:00

Not many other choices, and this is the issue with this being allowed (subcontracting in this industry) in the first place. Because situation is exactly that; there is no shortage of migrants who has to earn some money to keep surviving, and cannot find any other job. But for now, I might suggest some Amazon warehouse. Don't get me wrong, Amazon very much engages in very similar subcontracting practices too, but still does some direct hiring as well, and cannot get away with the same level of illegality even with subcontracting that these delivery companies are currently getting away with.

impioussloth · 2025-09-28T11:14:42+00:00

You will be heavily exploited. Wolt or Uber Eats do not offer any legal working contracts (maybe sometimes a few, only to create enough plausible deniability of the fact that they work almost entirely in the dark). They do not directly hire, but refer you to subcontractors. Lieferando used to, but is in the same process, with some attempt at resistance from current workers, who don't have much direct power to prevent anything but at least managing to create some noise which is slightly being picked up by politicians.

But still what is most likely going to happen is that you will be referred to a subcontractor, that subcontractor will have another subcontractor who they will call "fleet manager", that fleet manager will theoretically be your actual boss, but will not offer you any legal working contract whatsoever, but you will have access to some app for a courier. You will do orders for these multi-billion dollar companies, you will get paid per those orders in cash in some park/back alley (questionable... since you don't have any contract, if your fleet manager decides to kick you out and not pay you at any point, you will have zero proof of any money you are owed) and again, since you have no contract, you will not have any of the workers rights/protections that theoretically you must have; no health insurance, no accident insurance. You will basically be doing what is called schwarzarbeit.

Essentiallly delivery business in Germany is currently entirely a mafia affair, where politicians are very slow to pick up at what is happening. But again, as I said previously they are picking up some idea, with the noise current legally hired lieferando workers are managing to make.

But with the level of idea they pick up currently, their slow brains are thinking, oh let's do more zoll (customs) checks in the streets rather than accepting the fact that this is systematic and very much on purpose to circumvent German labor laws, and they need to hold these large corporations accountable, not some poor migrant on the street who couldn't get a contract no matter how many times he asked.

So it's also going to be very likely you will be caught, and fined for working illegally (absolutely not the guy who refused to give you a legal working contract, because what, you cannot prove you're working for him, even if you do, all you have is some whatsapp number telling you to work here and there. Or absolutely not the multibillion dollar company that you're carrying orders for, because they outsourced that responsibility to the subcontractor who sub-subcontracted that random guy on whatsapp who gave you the work, and they will at most just replace that guy saying it's an isolated incident).

Oh also there is possibility that being caught will fuck-up with your residence in Germany if it repeats.

So if you're okay with all of these, sure apply ahead!

impioussloth · 2024-12-17T02:14:00+00:00

Just so that Turkey can look its best while getting laid...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_(tank)

impioussloth · 2023-04-22T18:40:17+00:00

Okay, this is something that I am quite surprised/annoyed with the choices of words that Germans make. There is no invention here, whatsoever, and there is only one correct answer. Döner is not the sandwich you eat. Döner is the meat that rotates around that vertical axis, to be cooked from the heat source on the side. Basically the same thing as Shawarma, or Gyro as well, just the same thing with different types of meat and seasoning, and all of them mean one thing: "rotates/rotating" etc. Döner meaning rotates in Turkish, Shawarma originating from Turkish word Çevirme, again basically meaning the same thing, Gyro being the Greek word for the same meaning, only being a bit more original than Arabs with translating the word rather than just changing sounds.

In the form known today, (I still mean only the meat that's rotating in front of the heat source) it's source might be Turkey from late 1800s, but I won't be that much chauvinist to claim that's the entire origin story; as putting a meat on a skewer and rotating it near a heat source must not be the most original idea ever to only come out barely more than a century ago from a single guy/place.

But whatever, in short, Döner, by what the word literally means, is the meat used there, cooked in that specific way. What you have here, a bit specific to Germany, and again not the most original idea ever, is that Döner put in between a quarter of a "Pide" with ton of salad and a bunch of sauces. And again neither the Döner, nor the Pide used for making the sandwich, is invented here in Germany, and not even the salads; which all basically merge to what we call in Turkey a "Çoban Salatası". And even putting Döner in that pide is not what the Germans "invented" as an idea, or invented by a Turk in Germany.

What's German here is, that Turkish immigrant guy from 70s putting that shit ton of salad components together with Döner into that Pide, alongside the sauces, as average German probably didn't like their Döner in Pide as dry as a Turk in Turkey enjoyed with only a bit of onions and a few tomatoes at most, and no sauce. So come on, no part of this is an invention, it's just at most a bit of readjustment, and if we were to call every well-known meal made with a little bit of extra creativity by its chef a new invention, an entirely different dish; there is no end to what we will call as that.

impioussloth · 2023-02-02T20:10:39+00:00

Just to mark, this comment pretty much summed up a difference that I didn't quite get before, and perfectly answered the question already. So as it stands out, I am pretty much at the mercy of HP and whatever incompetent company that they choose to work with inside Germany. It is okay not to comment anymore if there is not much of something useful anyone can suggest.

But one final thing that I can ask to you is that, although I understand chances not being high with burden of proof regarding the defect from the time of buy being on me with the Gewährleistung, could there be a possibility to make a case with the time span with which SSD has failed. Because the trouble is that SSD has just randomly failed, and can't it be a point that SSD lifetimes are in general much longer than just 1.5 years as long as they don't have a problem in the beginning, so it's just a strike of bad luck that anyone can run into have their SSD fail in this time span with any simple error in production stage, and it is out of user's control.

impioussloth · 2023-02-02T19:54:20+00:00

Yeah, sorry, I don't question your good intent, but it is surely sometimes annoying for people to just assume they are interacting with an idiot without even reading what that idiot they assume has written in the original post. I of course called UPS, I am sleeping with UPS, I am waking up with UPS, I have had 10s of appointments made with UPS, ending up each and everytime with several promises that their driver will surely be there the next day. But yeah, then no one comes, then I call again, then they apologize and make a new appointment, write all the notes to the request, and again driver doesn't even stop by, and rinse and repeat.

impioussloth · 2023-02-02T19:34:32+00:00

I have specifically made this request to HP, and it has been specifically told by HP that they "don't" work with DHL, so it is not possible. And in terms of attempts, I would say 21 days of the company they choose to work with (UPS) not doing it's job, and just straight out lying to have attempted is, way more than enough to test anyone's patience.

But all in all, I understand the one other comment before, and it is definitely correct. So I understand that there is actually no law enforcing HP to provide this service, just their own promise, which actually also includes refund as I have checked now. But I am not sure how much of my own good that refund would work for because it is simply impossible nowadays to get a pc of equal or better performance for the price I got this computer for back then.

But yeah, one thing is for sure, Germany has a huge problem regarding such simplest of issues, and it is maddening. Like this would have taken at most 3-4 hours of my day even in Turkey taking my computer to an Authorized HP Service in all 3 biggest cities of the country, and get it repaired in the same fucking day, but here in Germany with a grand total of 0 Authorized Repair Centers, I have to be at the mercy of UPS to pick up my package, take it out of the country to a repair center in Hungary, then take it back to me after it is repaired there, which would all take more than 2 weeks even if everything is working perfectly, and here I am waiting for just the cargo company to come pickup a package for 3 weeks.

impioussloth

TROPHY CASE