The Gratitude Tax

The first time it happened, I was taken aback, confused, and offended.

I’m sure you’ve been there. Innocently trying to pay for your take-out order at a fast food restaurant when the card reader asks if you’d like to leave a tip. A tip! For what? For bagging up my sandwich? Isn’t that your job?

Perhaps my thoughts were obvious, since the worker seemed embarrassed as she guided me through the screen. “You don’t have to tip; you can just ignore that screen.” Which I did. Feeling very self-righteous. The very idea! Tipping for counter service. That’s crazy.

It’s easy to feel resentful. It’s also easy to feel guilty. Those predetermined amounts make us feel pressured to give something. We may also feel uneasy, wondering where the tip money goes. Some self-check-kiosks actually ask for a tip!

We expect to tip servers in fine-dining establishments – what my students used to call “sit- down” restaurants. We expect to tip cab drivers, delivery persons, and hair-dressers, doormen, baristas, hotel maids...the list goes on.

Tipping culture in America is out of control, and it is a source of stress for some people. I was one of them. I felt pressured and angry and guilty each time I encountered the tip prompting screen and refused to pay any extra.

Then on a day when I was feeling particularly generous or the employee was particularly cheerful, I added 15% to my tab. And it didn’t kill me. In fact, it actually felt pretty good. In the long run, I could afford the extra couple of dollars, and while it didn’t make a lot of difference to me, perhaps it would to the employee. Rather than feeling resentful, I felt grateful.

Grateful that I could afford the tip, grateful that I wasn’t the one working behind a counter, perhaps dependent on tips, grateful that someone else had prepared my meal for the evening.

I decided in that moment that it was healthier for me to be grateful than resentful, so I’ve started calling these solicited tips the gratitude tax. I don’t eat out or order in all that often, so my tips or lack there of aren’t going to change the system one way or another, but I have changed my attitude to gratitude.

If nothing else, the tip prompt is a reminder to count my blessings, and that, my friends, is a tip I can live with!