Requests for a tip now appear at counters, kiosks and collection windows where none was expected a decade ago. The expansion followed the technology rather than a change in service.
The screen made asking free
Asking for a tip verbally is awkward and takes time, which limited the practice to settings where a relationship already existed between server and customer.
A payment terminal asks automatically, identically, every time, and neither party has to raise the subject.
Because the prompt costs the business nothing to enable, it appears wherever the software offers it, which is now almost everywhere.
Defaults do most of the work
The screen presents suggested amounts, and the values chosen become a reference point against which any other choice feels like a deliberate departure.
Selecting a custom amount or declining usually requires an extra tap, and doing so in front of the person serving carries social cost.
Suggested percentages have also drifted upward, and since they are percentages, they rise automatically with prices as well.
The underlying wage structure did not move with it
Tipping in table service developed alongside a wage system that assumes tips form part of income, with employers permitted to pay a lower base rate.
Counter service and retail generally sit outside that system, so the tip is genuinely additional rather than filling a legally anticipated gap.
Customers cannot tell which situation they are in from the terminal, and the same prompt appears in both.
Businesses gain more than the tip itself
Tips can offset pressure for higher wages, and they let a business advertise a lower headline price while total cost to the customer rises.
Distribution varies. Pooling arrangements, sharing with kitchen staff and processing deductions all affect how much reaches the person who served.
That opacity is part of why resistance has grown, since the customer cannot verify that the payment does what it appears to do.
The backlash has a predictable shape
Surveys of sentiment consistently show fatigue, and some operators have moved to service-included pricing to remove the decision entirely.
Those experiments face a pricing problem: the higher menu price is visible while the removed tip is not, so the venue looks expensive beside competitors.
Unless the change happens across a whole market at once, the business that removes tipping bears a cost its neighbours do not.