This is probably going to upset some people, but tipping culture has gotten out of hand. Recently, I went to buy a drink from Starbucks, and it was already somewhat expensive. In addition to the $6.00 that I paid for a coffee, I was asked to tip 20%.

I understand that some workers who work in restaurants and similar jobs  rely on tips as a major part of their paycheck. In this scenario, when a waiter has been serving you for the past hour, I do believe that they deserve a large tip. In restaurants, the waiters interact with you, make you feel welcomed, and service you for a lengthy period of time.

However, when a worker spends less than five minutes putting your food in a bag at the drive-through or mixing up my iced coffee, I don’t think  they should be asking for a 20% tip. These workers already receive hourly wages, which are a minimum of $16.28 an hour, and they do not interact with me enough to earn tips like regular waiters do.

The root of the problems lies in the fact that companies are underpaying workers. Large corporations just use tipping culture as an excuse to pay their employees less. 

This raises the question of why is it the consumer’s responsibility to pay the service employees? The answer is: it shouldn’t be.

Even though I don’t believe  some workers deserve tips, I usually do tip them anyway.

After hearing that statement, you might be pretty confused because it seems like I am disregarding my argument up to this point, and I agree with you.

The reason that I tip basically every time is because if I don’t tip, these service workers give me the dirtiest look. It’s either a 20% tip and a happy interaction with the service worker, or a quick tap of the no tip button and I skedaddle out of there.

But it gets worse. The most horrendous part of tipping culture is when you buy something online for pickup and the business automatically adds a 20% tip to your total. At that point, we just need to make it a standard to include tips in the total to begin with, or not tip at all. 

At the end of the day, tipping culture has gotten way out of hand, and businesses are getting tips even if they don’t necessarily need it. For this reason, I encourage you to consider tipping 20%, 30%, or even 110% for reading this article. If you don’t, you will have to feel the guilt of not tipping a dedicated Patriot Press writer.