There was a time when tipping had a fairly predictable map. You tipped your server, your bartender, maybe the person who cut your hair. Everything else was just a price on a receipt, no awkward screen turn, no eye contact while you decided between 18 and 25 percent.
That map has been redrawn. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of adults said that tipping was expected in more places today than it was five years ago, a phenomenon known as “tip creep” or “tipflation.” Here are nine spots where that shift has become impossible to ignore.
1. Self-Checkout Kiosks at Grocery and Retail Stores
Scanning your own groceries used to be the one transaction guaranteed to skip the tip conversation entirely. That guarantee is gone. Some feel pressured to tip in places not common before, such as drive-thrus and self-checkout kiosks at convenience stores. A meaningful share of shoppers now report seeing the prompt even when they did every bit of the scanning and bagging themselves.
The logic behind it is murky at best, since the customer is doing the labor the tip would traditionally reward. Self-service kiosks now prompt customers to tip for an order placed and retrieved entirely by the customer. Most of these screens still include a skip option, though it’s often smaller and easy to miss on a rushed touchscreen.
2. Coffee Shops and Quick-Service Counters
Coffee counters have quietly become ground zero for tip creep. Square’s 2024 report found that 74% of restaurants now use digital tipping systems, a big jump from just 10% a decade ago. That shift didn’t happen gradually. It happened almost overnight once tablet-based payment systems became the default at nearly every counter.
The suggested amounts have climbed right along with the technology. The recommended tips on these screens often start at 18% and can go as high as 25%, making the old 15% standard feel like a thing of the past. For a four-dollar drip coffee handed over in under a minute, that math can feel oddly disproportionate to the actual service rendered.
3. Fast-Food Drive-Thrus and Take-Out Counters
Fast food was practically the definition of a no-tip zone for decades. That’s no longer a safe assumption everywhere. Takeout and counter service tips are now sometimes suggested at rates rivaling or exceeding those for full, seated table service.
Some chains have leaned into it more than others, which creates confusing inconsistency for customers moving between them. One frequently cited example is drive-in chains that want a tip for bringing food out, even though other major fast-food brands do the same job without ever asking. That patchwork approach is a big part of why so many people feel unsure what’s actually expected from one drive-thru window to the next.
4. Automated and Drive-Thru Car Washes
Car washes might be the single most surprising entry on this list, mostly because so much of the process is mechanical. The tip line is showing up in more unlikely places, including largely automated car washes, with several chains now soliciting customers to tip after paying for a largely automated service.
Etiquette guides have tried to draw a clearer line around when a tip actually makes sense here. A purely automated car wash where no person touches the vehicle generally doesn’t require a tip, though most service car washes do involve manual labor. The confusion tends to arise because the payment screen asks before you even know how much human involvement your specific wash will include.
5. Retail Stores Selling Pre-Made or Grab-and-Go Items
Buying a bottle of wine or a pre-packaged sandwich from a store counter used to be a straightforward cash-register moment. Increasingly, it isn’t. Retail settings now sometimes request gratuity when customers buy pre-made food items or simply check out at a liquor store.
One widely shared account described being prompted to tip while buying a concert t-shirt at an arena merchandise stand, a purchase with no service component at all. That kind of experience isn’t isolated, as an online thread asking about the weirdest places people had been prompted to tip drew responses ranging from movie ticket counters to vape shops and auto mechanics. The common thread in nearly all of them is a card reader that simply came preloaded with a tipping feature the retailer never disabled.
6. Food Trucks
Food trucks occupy an odd middle ground between fast food and sit-down dining, and their payment systems have followed the fast-casual playbook closely. Digital payment screens now appear at coffee shops, bakeries, food trucks, self-checkout counters and even some retail stores.
Because food trucks often run on the same portable card readers as coffee carts and pop-up stands, they tend to inherit whatever default tip settings came out of the box. Customers waiting in a short line for a taco or a scoop of shaved ice frequently find themselves facing the same 20, 25, or 30 percent buttons they’d see at a full-service restaurant. It’s a small transaction dressed up with a suggestion built for a much larger one.
7. Self-Pickup Orders From Apps and Websites
Ordering ahead and picking up your own food should, in theory, be one of the clearest cases where a tip isn’t warranted. Plenty of customers disagree with how that’s playing out in practice. Some report being asked to tip when ordering food they’re picking up themselves, even when the item isn’t brought out to their car the way certain other chains handle it without a tip request at all.
The disconnect is even sharper with subscription-based delivery services. Some subscription services now include a prompt asking if you’d like to add a tip during checkout or renewal, even though there’s no server or delivery person you’ll ever meet. That kind of prompt is a clear example of a tip request following the payment technology rather than the actual service being performed.
8. Convenience Stores and Gas Stations
Grabbing a soda and a bag of chips at a corner store rarely involved much personal service to begin with, yet the tip screen has found its way there too. Digital payment screens now appear at coffee shops, bakeries, food trucks, self-checkout counters and even some retail stores, and convenience stores fit squarely into that expanding category.
Gas station convenience shops have become an especially common flashpoint because the transactions are so brief. Paying for fuel or a quick snack rarely takes more than a swipe and a nod, yet the same suggested percentages built for full-service dining often show up on the same handheld terminal. It’s less about the specific store and more about which payment processor happened to install the hardware.
9. Ticket Counters and Specialty Retail Shops
Movie theaters, vape shops, and even some medical offices have started showing up on lists of unexpected tip requests, which tells you how far the trend has traveled from its restaurant roots. Responses to an online thread about the weirdest places people had been prompted to tip included movie ticket counters, vape shops, auto mechanics and even a dermatologist’s office.
None of these are traditionally tipped professions, and there’s rarely a clear explanation offered for why the prompt appears. In most cases it comes down to the same reason as the grocery kiosk or the car wash screen: the point-of-sale system shipped with a tipping feature turned on, and nobody at the front counter ever bothered to switch it off. Customers are left to decide, transaction by transaction, whether to tap the suggested percentage or hunt for the smaller custom or no-tip option buried beneath it.
Frustration with all of this has become measurable rather than anecdotal. A Bankrate survey found that about 66% of Americans view tipping negatively and roughly 30% of respondents believe tipping culture to be “out of control.” Even so, tipping remains voluntary in every one of these settings. Tipping is always voluntary, and the preset percentages are only suggestions, with most payment screens including a custom option that lets you enter your own amount or skip the tip entirely.
Knowing that distinction, between what a screen suggests and what a transaction actually calls for, is probably the most useful tool any shopper has right now. The technology isn’t going anywhere soon, but the choice of what button to press still belongs to the person holding the card.
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