Tipping Has Gotten Out of Control

So have donation requests, and it needs to stop

“I think I’ve taken a step in the right direction finally,” I explained to my friend Jay via text yesterday.

“You’ve stopped contacting psychics?” he wrote back. “Stopped listening to Hall and Oates?”

I was at Tijuana Flats, and I’d just ordered a quesadilla.

“No, I refused to tip,” I said.

“Good boy. You’re getting there. One step at a time.”

It’s an issue that’s been plaguing me for a while now…

But I still might have tipped anyway had I not been asked to round my payment off to the nearest dollar beforehand, for some cause or other.

Typically the people making this request are so sick of repeating it that it comes out of their mouths in an almost automated, rapid-fire manner, similar to those long lists of side effects being recited at the end of drug commercials.

The first part of the request — “Would you like to round your payment up to the nearest dollar to help…” — is just barely decipherable. But the second part, where they’re ostensibly explaining who I’ll be assisting with my donation, is usually sheer gibberish.

I can never quite catch who I’m donating to, and it feels gauche to ask them to repeat it. It suggests there’s a cause I might deem unworthy, and could invite unwanted judgement as a result.

And somewhere, in that split second of confusion and indecisiveness, they’ve got you. Before you know it you’re nodding like a bobblehead doll and swiping your card through that bloody machine while the cashier prepares your aspartame laden beverage.

I’ve been falling for it for ages.

I’d like to think my 32 cents is contributing to cancer research, or to those emaciated African children I see on TV commercials who are too weak and demoralized to swat away the swarms of flies laying eggs on their patchy scalps.

But I could just as easily be contributing to ‘The Future Serial Killers of America Association’, or something worse. I just play along because I never know what the hell they’re saying anyway.

“Sir would you like to round your payment off to the nearest dollar to support the ‘Save the Cannibals Project’?”

“Of course! Who wouldn’t? Sign me up!”

If I’m at a traditional restaurant and am being served by a waiter or waitress, I’m happy to tip, and tip generously.

But if I’m ordering at a counter — like I was at Tijuana Flats — and am carrying my tray of food to a table myself, the unspoken arrangement no longer applies. This should be obvious to all parties involved, and I resent the emotional manipulation that comes packaged with the tip option at the bottom of that payment terminal.

Tip? Tip you for what exactly? Pointing out where the condiments are located? Suggesting I “have a nice day”?

If, as a culture, we’ve decided that such inane babble is worthy of tips, I don’t know what’s stopping me from quitting my day job to roam the streets while offering complete strangers random bits of useless information like, “North Dakota plates on that El Camino” or “twenty percent chance of rain today”, before shoving a donation basket in their faces and shuffling off to the next sucker.

All that aside, any remaining obligation I may have felt that day to tip was negated by the cashier’s annoying request to round off my payment to the nearest dollar. Between that and the three dollar fountain soda he tricked me into buying, I finally marshaled enough courage to ignore the tip option.

Resentment has it’s merits.

I posted a beanbag on OfferUp recently.

The description went something like this: “FREE beanbag. Blue. Good condition. Come and pick it up.”

One of the first people to reply wrote back and said, “Will you deliver? I’m in Altamonte.”

The comment left me struggling with the same brand of confusion I usually experience when I pick up a pizza and am prompted to tip on the bottom of the receipt.

In times like these I’ll often wonder if I’m trapped in some weird parallel reality where up is down, left is right, and idiots who take the time and effort to pick up their pizzas for the sole reason of saving money are somehow hypnotized into forgetting their motivations when confronted with a payment terminal.

It’s such a brazen and shameless request that it’s forced me to stop and really think sometimes: Am I missing something here? Am I being cheap? Curmudgeony? Selfish?

Isn’t the very point of picking up your pizza to avoid tipping?

I believe it was Hitler who said (paraphrase) that it was the big lie that was the most effective…no matter how preposterously presented.

And it’s true. The big lie has a way of paralyzing the brain, precisely because it is so preposterous. You almost can’t help assuming you must be missing something.

Altamonte is a good 20 minutes from me, which means that, aside from the gas I’d be wasting, I’d also be sacrificing 40 minutes of my time, at least, to deliver this FREE beanbag.

I’d foolishly assumed that any clear thinking person would understand that the words “come and pick it up” meant exactly that. And I’d also assumed, without really thinking about it, that any clear thinking person presented with a free item wouldn’t be so obnoxious as to also request delivery.

I was wrong.

I wrote the man back:“Sure I’ll deliver it. No problem. Would you like me to blow you too while I’m at it?”

I do my grocery shopping at Publix.

It isn’t uncommon to get solicited for this charity or that one by the cashiers there.

While superficially it may appear to be a noble cause, I see some shades of gray in their approach.

For starters, they’re announcing their request in front of, essentially, a crowd. It’s manipulative. “Would you like to donate to the American Cancer Society?” And of course on that day, just behind you, is a doleful, emaciated looking kid with bloodshot eyes and a crooked wig wearing a “cancer picked the wrong girl” t-shirt.

And even if she’s not behind you, she might as well be. Because her mother certainly is, or her grandmother, or some other unfortunate bastard who is either suffering from cancer themselves or knows someone close to them who is.

Game, set, match. It’s over. You have no choice. You might invent some excuse to wriggle out of it, but then you’ll forever be the guy who refused to donate a dollar to cancer research in their eyes. You could perform CPR on a dying baby and it would hardly matter. “Did you see that guy who refused to donate a dollar to cancer research save that baby’s life?” they’d say. “Nice of him…but surely he had a dollar to spare!”

Maybe a year ago or so I was approached by two teenage kids in the Publix parking lot looking for donations for their football team.

Normally this sort of thing would cause me a little aggravation, but I was completely at ease because I had a bulletproof excuse: I don’t carry cash. And that’s the truth.

Sometimes in these types of situations I’ll even open my wallet up to demonstrate my honesty. “See? No cash. Sorry about that.” And then I walk off feeling victorious.

But the kids have gotten clever. They now arrive equipped with card swiping devices attached to their phones.

So I told the kid, “Look, I’d like to help, you seem like a nice kid, but I just don’t trust that thing and — ”

“Oh okay, I get it,” the kid said to me.

What a second, did he just roll his eyes?

Suddenly I realized my potential faux pas and I froze. I became intensely self conscious.

See, the two boys were black. Which, in a sane world, would be an irrelevant detail. But in a culture of race obsessed lunatics like ours, where the tiniest indiscretion can earn you lifelong infamy, it’s easy to clam up in a situation like this.

I’d just told these two black young men that I “didn’t trust” their card swiping devices. That comment, in the hands of our race baiting media, could easily be twisted to suggest racist connotations.

Call me paranoid, but I’ve seen people get singled out for far less. I scroll yahoo news most days and there’s usually some example of this. “White Karen Scowls at Black Woman Who Took The Last Package of Oreos”, the headline will read, and it’s usually accompanied by a shaky cell phone video of the awkward interaction.

The media loves this type of shit. It sells.

Next we see this “Karen” tearfully apologizing on the five o’clock news as she emerges from her former place of employment carrying various personal belongings in a cardboard box. “It was just a silly misunderstanding, truly. I don’t think I deserved to be fired, but I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused and I promise to do better in the future…”

And here I had a couple of young guys waving cell phones in my face, and I couldn’t be sure this all wasn’t being recorded.

I envisioned it all: the video going viral, my clumsy apology, the flood of text messages from family and friends, the tedious job search…

And in an effort to reach a middle ground, I offered to grab some cash from a nearby ATM machine. But the damage, hypothetical or not, was already done…in my mind at least. All I could see, as I made my way to the ATM, were the inevitable headlines on Yahoo news: White Male Karen Humiliates Black Teens by Making Them Wait for Handout.

“It was just a silly misunderstanding,” I’d be forced to tell the press. “I don’t think I deserve to be fired but I do apologize for the pain I’ve caused and I promise to do better in the future. Truly…”

I do give money away often, usually to the homeless. I like to know exactly where my money is going when I donate it, and this approach satisfies that itch and also my genuine desire to help.

But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some element of selfishness involved.

It’s said when you die, you’re presented with a “life review”, where all your actions are played back to you in the style of movie — warts and all — and it’s my hope that my donations might act as leverage against some of my more ignoble actions. “Sure, I pissed on that drunk guy’s head at Harborfest in 1996,” I’d say to God. “But oh, look at the way I selflessly gave to that homeless family in 2014! And hey, what about the time I gave those black kids cash for their football team in 2022? And don’t forget the time…”