U.S. News

The new part is every card payment system having a tip option, where as tips used to be a thing you gave a server in cash on the table, then a optional fee addended to a bill at a sit down restaurant to compensate the server (since they were getting payed below minimum wage), this is different though.

Even food providers where there are no servers have “tips” now. Often times establishments do not even choose to have them, they’re just the default on the payment system.

The tip system was always kind of scummy as it was putting the onus of preventing the server from getting kicked out of their home on the customer. Now though, rather than costumers being put on the hook for paying exploited workers, the companies are weaponizing that guilt based system to pad profits even further. Often times those “tips” don’t even end up going to the workers at the restaurant, they go straight in to the companies revenues, and pad the incomes of the payment service companies that get a 1-3% cut of every transaction.

What used to be conceptualized as a way to reward hard work is now just another avenue to scam people out of money. It’s another crack in the wall of a system that is mindlessly sabotaging it’s own justifications. Creating further contradictions.