“Tipping at Self-Checkout: A New Trend for American Consumers and Businesses”

Americans who pay at a self-checkout checkout are increasingly faced with a surprise. Namely, that when making a purchase, where no or hardly an employee is involved, a tip is asked. In the United States it is customary to tip, especially in the hospitality industry, and the fact that cash registers now also ask for tips is new.

For the time being, it mainly concerns cash registers at airports, in coffee shops, bakeries and sports stadiums, the Wall Street Journal. Customers are increasingly ordering there via a computer, paying via a computer and at most picking up their order at the counter, if they can’t just take it from the shelf themselves. There is virtually no interaction with a human being.

In America, a tip of 20 percent is usually given in the hospitality industry. This mainly serves to increase the wages of the catering employees, because the wages in that sector are not enough to live on. Companies are required by law to distribute tips among employees. Now that the self-checkout has become commonplace, that part of the income is now in danger of disappearing.

According to consumer behavior and business management experts, businesses are taking advantage of the situation by now requiring cashiers to ask for tips. They count on many customers to leave tips out of sympathy for the employees, so they don’t have to raise salaries themselves. A gloomy picture of the future: they promised flying cars, but we got begging robots.