The culture of tipping in the United States has run out of control in recent years. Sure, as a general rule of basic courtesy, you tip your bartenders, and you tip your servers at restaurants. No one has a problem doing that. But now, you are presented to give a tip on virtually any transaction you make. Usually met with someone flipping a screen toward you and saying 'just going to ask you a couple questions here.'

It happens now for buying a bottle of water, or even at places where no one brings you food. Just someone standing at a screen believes they deserve a tip. It has reached a point of lunacy, and now most people's generosity is running out.

Heather Haddon of the Wall Street Journal says people became generous after the pandemic, where people were locked in their homes for months. But now, the good feelings have evaporated.

"You see a lot of resentment, and people just get fed up being asked to tip in so many circumstances they did not before, outside of the restaurant experience," she says.

In a survey from the WSJ, over 1,000 readers responded saying they tip less than they did in recent years. That is certainly not surprising given the state of the economy. But people also expect good service, and good service is somewhat hard to come by these days.

However, the tipping experience has become far less personal. At a restaurant, you interact with the waiter/waitress and establish some form of rapport with them. In most places now, tipping is just another half-hearted attempt to make more money, and it is not working well.

"We have seen these digital iPad tablets pop up everywhere...and that is where you are seeing the pushback from people, getting fed up with being prompted to tip in so many different circumstances," says Haddon.

But it is not going away anytime soon. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you cannot put it back in, so we will see this as common place now. But as people do, we adapt.

To cope with it, people are taking their own measures. Some are not tipping on the taxes and taking the fees out when they factor in the tip. There is also a significant number of people just putting their foot down when it comes to the needless tipping for someone handing you a microwaved bagel.

"Some are just saying no to those digital tip screens, and feel fine about it," Haddon says.

Tipping culture has run amok and is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Michael Berry