[monnok]

I lived about 40 years under a sort of social truce with tipping culture. Tipping is inherently too transactional and too patronizing for my comfort. But the social construct, including laws, around server wages and tips was so well established I was able to establish a sort of loose personal policy. This truce allowed me to tip consistently and generously transaction after transaction. Yet, it allowed me to still somewhat abstract each tip from its transactional and patronizing character.

Not only is that social truce now violated, it is violated specifically within our new global environment of every-transaction-of-any-kind-is-a-novel-attempt-at-customer-exploitation. Every supposed price is already a mystery, and every voluntary tip screen is a mystery with an ethical puzzle and a face to face confrontation.

I’ve drastically scaled back my use of services because it is emotionally taxing for me to confront the utter pettiness of trying to guess how much I should be paying for hot noodles from day to day.