Can I ask what makes you think tipping at fast food is expected? Has anyone in your life told you they think it's rude not to tip there or have you had any bad interactions with a worker when you tried to skip tipping?
When the person taking my credit card at the drive thru hands me the little machine and tells me which button to push for 15, 18 or 20% tip...and watching me until I hand it back...yeah its expected.
Or, just this morning as I was getting coffee at a drive-through coffee stand, I handed my card to the person and she asked "How much would you like to leave as a tip. It's totally optional!"
This is abusing how human relations work. Saying "it's totally optional" in no way reduces the social and emotional pressure of this.
Although I did say "Nothing," because that's insane.
Interestingly, at a different coffee place I frequent, they never mention tips directly. They have a tip jar that is also labelled "If you want to put a tip on your card, just tell us!"
I tip them from time to time. But if you pressure me, either verbally or through those crazy-making POS keypads, you won't get a dime from me. And I'll be less likely to return. I'm fed up.
Starbucks just added a mandatory tip screen one has to navigate thru to pay when tapping a credit card to several of the locations near me in the last couple of months when using the drive thru. It's bonkers.
Lots of places have a mandatory tip screen, I have literally never seen one that didn't have an "enter your own percent" button that allowed you to enter zero (if not a skip button)
Perhaps many people aren't recognizing that that's a 'no thanks' button that makes tipping non-mandatory?
Depends on the “fast food” but generally, terminals have custom or no tipping buried in the interface after 25/20/18/15/10 or whatever the steps are.
I would be happy if 18 and 10 were the bottom options, depending on the place. It’s frankly not easy to even choose those.
Pre-pandemic, I tipped 20% for restaurants or delivery, and 10% to “restaurants” for pickup, if it was a restaurant with table service. I still mostly do that, but it’s often the lowest option these days. I do not appreciate there being a lowest tipping amount of 15% for fast casual. It is quite a bit of work to get to the 10. Depending on the exact place, it’s fuzzy if really that is appropriate or not, I really don’t think it’s appropriate for a restaurant without table service to be requesting a tip of 10% or higher for pickup, but here we are.
