TIP CREEP IS REAL

In a post last year, radio host Amy Beeman detailed an average week in the life of Vancouver tipping: She was prompted to tip up to 25 per cent at her coffee shop. The same prompt turned up again at a self-serve frozen yogurt place. Finally, she was prompted for a tip at the liquor store. “Asking me to tip you when you have done nothing to deserve a tip is aggressive in an ‘in your face’ sort of way,” Beeman fumed. The culprit in all this is electronic payment machines. In an analog era of cash or manual “clunk clunk” credit card machines, it would have been the height of gall for restaurants to provide their customers with a list of “expected” tips. But tip prompts of as high 30 per cent are now a standard feature of electronic pay machines. “Pressed for time, and faced with the challenge of calculating a more customary 15 per cent gratuity on the fly, many people simply select the higher default options,” reads an

analysis by City National Bank. Meanwhile, tip creep is encouraged by payment companies who boost their own earnings for every extra dollar flowing through the system. Square, a device that transforms any smartphone into a digital pay station, has become a particularly insidious agent of tip creep, delivering tip prompts at farmer’s markets, craft shows and even for girl guide cookies. What’s more, these electronic tips are often charged on top of sales tax. This is an easily missed detail, but it’s quietly funnelling vast sums of money into the tip economy. For a 15 per cent tip on a bill of $100, for instance, tipping on tax sneaks in another $1.95 to the tip.