Travelers serve as easy targets for ‘guilt tipping ’

It’s a new kind of harassment, thanks to growing gig economy

Feel a little guilty when you travel? You should. You probably aren’t tipping enough. Don’t take my word for it. Travelers are experiencing a new kind of harassment, courtesy of the exploding gig economy. Call it guilt tipping.

You know what that is, don’t you? It’s when an employee pressures you into dropping a dollar into the tip jar with a sign (“Tips welcome”) or even asks you for a gratuity. If you don’t pay up, you’re shamed for your lack of generosity, at best — or at worst, for stealing someone’s salary.

Travelers are easy prey. Last month, Uber reached an agreement with drivers in California and Massachusetts that permits them to solicit tips from customers, even though Uber’s site says “there’s no need to tip” drivers. Restaurants are the worst offenders. A recent Pew Research study found 3.75 million people earning near-minimum wages in the food services industry. Many of them depend on gratuities and are not shy about telling customers about the arrangement.

Reputable businesses say they don’t condone guilt tipping and they don’t let their employees do it, but it’s still happening more frequently than ever. As the summer travel season heats up, you’re likely to experience it, too.

Andrew Chapados did on a recent visit to a Korean restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip. It was a disappointing dining experience from start to finish, from overpriced food to a strict no-sharing policy. When the $50 bill arrived, he skipped the tip.

“The server chased us down the street to remind us we didn’t leave a tip,” remembers Chapados, a writer from Toronto. His girlfriend forked over $3.

You don’t even have to travel to get guilt-tipped. Carol Lockerby surrendered a $20 bill after a furniture store employee requested a gratuity. She and her adult daughter had bought a bookcase, and the employee helped her load it into her car. She thanked him, then he swiveled around and said, “No tip?” Lockerby, a retired operations manager from San Francisco, says she felt sorry for the employee, who looked as if he was in his mid-60s. “That’s why I succumbed,” she explains.

The hard-sell can be bad for a business. Zondra Wilson, who runs a skin care company in Los Angeles, remembers catching a cab from Manhattan to the sub- urbs. “I didn’t know the fare would be well over a hundred bucks,” she says. “I had very little left for a tip. That wasn’t my intention.” The driver exploded at her inadequate gratuity.

“He started rattling about how far the cab ride was and how he needed more,” she says. “It turned me off. I use Uber now.”

How does guilt tipping work? The two most common strategies are perceived wealth and peer pressure, relationship expert April Masini says. “It’s ‘Everybody leaves a tip, so you should,’ ” she says.

Sometimes, the guilt tippers have an electronic accomplice. Bob Tupper, a guidebook author from Bethesda, Md., says that when he pays his tab on Square, an electronic payment system, he’s presented with a tip option that tops out at a generous 25% of the purchase price.

“I always feel like I’m being stingy if I check the 18%,” he says.

Here’s the correct answer to the tipping question: The most reputable businesses consider gratuities to be optional and don’t condone their employees soliciting them from their customers.

“Tips are a monetary complement,” says Lawrence Shibley, part-owner of Yours Truly Restaurants, a chain of American diners local to Cleveland, “not a mandatory service charge.” He says his staff is trained to understand that a tip is a choice rather than an entitlement.

There’s another perspective on tipping. Service employees with below-minimum-wage jobs really need the gratuities to make ends meet. Travelers are pressured to pay more than the sticker price on everything from coffee to Korean barbecue — and made to feel guilty if they don’t.