After paying a tip on a normal transaction that didn't reserve a tip because of a dark UX pattern, I'm experiencing tip fatigue or tip burnout. It's shitty but now no one gets any tips unless I really think about it because of that.

It’s just an over generalized UI since those POS terminals are used for all sorts of stuff. I’ll tip when it’s appropriate and don’t when it’s not. One of the times I don’t find appropriate is food trucks staffed solely by the owner. Even though food service tipping is generally appropriate, I draw the line at tipping an owner. Seems like a bit of double dipping to me.

My self-checkout operator is pretty slow and doesn’t pack my bags very well so I never tip him. Maybe he’ll learn one day.

It has gotten out of control, especially the Square machines with the absurdly high tip suggestions/choices. I have not seen it on self-checkout machines yet. If it gets bad enough I will shop elsewhere.

I wonder if there's any evidence of how many customers are lost because of dark patterns or general scumminess. I suspect it's not many. I generally try to avoid giving money to any company that actively hates it's customers. For example Amazon, which is the like going to the shadiest third world bazaar and having every scam in the book thrown at you each time you try to buy something.

Same for any company that uses chatbots or otherwise prevents customer support.

But my guess is that people only care about price, and we'll just see an even faster race to the bottom as people get more conditioned to using disrespectful interfaces.

Back to tipping, it's ironically the impersonalness of shitty automated service that enables this. Few self respecting people would ask for 20% tips when they did literally nothing and you served yourself. But a computer interface can shamelessly nag you for whatever.

On a visit with my mom to the bay area a few weeks ago, we went into a chain philly cheese sandwich place and after placing our order the guy at the counter directed her to the POS screen to swipe her card and it automatically suggested a 15% tip for the counterperson. I watched the visible uncomfort on her face while she tipped this business out of guilt, all the while my mouth was open wondering where it all went wrong. we had zero interaction with the counter guy beyong saying the order we wanted.

Don't tip anyone! Thats how it spreads

I bought a bagel today and the checkout machine had options for 20%, 30%, or 40%! There was no way to opt out, so far as I could tell. I will not go back.

sometimes you have to hit the 'other' or 'custom amount' to set zero. They know what they're doing...

Don't the restaurants set their own recommended tip options? I don't think that's Square's fault. And their readers are at least far better than the old school black rectangle ones that take forever to do each screen

Whoa thanks! I thought I was alone. Everytime I bump into that it makes me doubt if there's people who actually leave 20%-30% tips regularly.

I tip my barista 20%, but they also just make my drink when I walk in and by the time I pay, it's waiting for me to walk out with. A relationship forged over years is well worth an extra quarter a day.

Where do you live where coffee is that cheap? $1.25?

Today my latte cost $6+ and I tipped $2 for it. Walked away wondering how the hell it got so expensive :/ (normally I just make them at home, but was lazy this morning)

I was referring to the 5% over 15% being a quarter. My latte is roughly $5 and I tip about $1.

I'll take "Dangers of Vertical Integration" for $2,000, Alex.

Is anyone familiar with how these tips are distributed from Point of Sale devices? The article makes a fair point that it might not be a good idea to give a tip if you don't know who will be receiving it. The tips might not even go to the employees...

Might not? Of course it doesn't! No employee of the store is going to get paid extra because the receiving account happened to have more money than necessary.

For some reason I find this mildly amusing. In the sense of the personification of the working machine.

I mean, if I tipped on a self-serve checkout, I'd expect to get the tip, and be pretty pissed at management for stealing my tips!

The machine has rights. It isn't being fairly compensated by its employer. Lol

There's something vaguely extortionate about "pre-tipping". I feel like my Subway sandwich or coffee might have some spittle in it unless I hit the 20% option. Rather being than a reward for good service, it's now a threat of sub-par service unless you cough up some cash.

That said, being a service worker suuuuuucks and they have to deal with an unlimited amount of self-entitled idiots on a daily basis, so I don't really begrudge them the extra salary.

Case in point from California - Crumbl cookies - overpriced cookies in nice packages, sold out of outposts. Tips correspondingly are outrageous for the machine. Checkout screens have these dark patterns that can trick you as well. Sigh!

Why the hell is the machine asking us for a tip? We're the ones doing the work.

So they don’t kill us later?

This is fine but I expect to get my share of the tip pool.