We're tipping for everything in Raleigh

• Tips are a way for businesses to pay employees more without having to raise prices, NPR’s Stacey Vanek Smith reported.

Zoom out: Businesses have long had tip jars; tipping isn’t new. And customers have long expected to tip professionals like hairstylists, taxi drivers, bartenders and servers — all situations in which a service is rendered.

What’s new is how often and how frequently customers are being asked to tip, Mason Jenkins, a clinical assistant professor of marketing in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte, told Axios.

• The ubiquitousness of tipping comes at a time when more businesses are moving toward cashless transactions — meaning the option to tip is automated — and as inflation has made everything we buy way pricier than it was a few years ago.

The intrigue: Jenkins has heard of requests for tips everywhere from self-service car washes to concession stands at movie theaters.

• “Tipping in these low-service situations has not always been the norm,” Jenkins said. “If customers are going to go along with this, they’re almost creating a new norm with their actions.”

Reality check: Consumers are starting to agree: Nearly 1 in 3 Americans think tipping culture has gotten out of control, a Bankrate survey found, according to Axios' Kelly Tyko.

Zoom in: Lee Robinson, owner of Irregardless Cafe and Brookside Bodega in Raleigh, told me the decision to tip is nuanced.

• "I've always found tipping to be awesome and also the bane of my existence," Robinson told Axios.
• "It's a whole lot of politics," Robinson told Axios. "I don't see a way out" of giving customers the option of how much to tip.

Robinson has adjusted the checkout-screen tipping options for Irregardless customers numerous times over the past few years, as COVID changed the industry and clients become more generous with their tips during the pandemic.

• Irregardless, a full-service restaurant, offers customers 20%, 22% and 25% tip options.
• But Brookside Bodega, where you can order food at the counter, buy retail items — like ice cream, wine bottles and toiletries — or sit at the bar, where full service is offered, also gives customers the option to tip for all three types of services.

Between the lines: Robinson himself, however, doesn't tip on retail anywhere he goes.

• And when asked whether he tips at places like the food counter at Brookside Bodega, he asked, "I don't tip at McDonald's; do you?"
• "I don't tip that kind of service usually," Robinson said. "But I do at full-service restaurants."

🗣️Tell us: Have your tipping habits changed over the past few years? Are you tipping more or less than before the pandemic? Do you get anxiety looking at that tip screen?

• Let us know at [email protected].