Creepy tips and behind the covers

Dear Rachel,

I know tip creep has been a thing for a while now, but it’s really getting out of hand. The touch screens when I check out now have a tip of 18% (sometimes even 20%) automatically selected, and you have to go through several clicks to manually input anything else. What happened to 15% being a standard minimum for full table service?? Now I’m supposed to pay a fifth of my tab over again for ordering at a counter and cleaning up my own trash. Tell me, has the etiquette really changed, or am I okay sticking to some coins in the tip jar?

– Tipped Over

Dear Toppled,

I like this little bit of reality far more than I should. In shop lingo, the checkout hardware & software is called the point of sale—or, more often, POS. Which it is. I don’t care what the etiquette is these days: businesses need to pay their employees what they’re worth. Let my tips show appreciation for the witty tip jars with their witty sayings written with witty Sharpies on an old, mostly washed-out mayonnaise jar, like it’s always been.

– Keep the change, Rachel 

Dear Rachel,

My mind is freaking blown… again. So OK, picture this: I’m in college when Sheryl Crow releases “The First Cut Is The Deepest.” Fine song, sounds vaguely familiar… oh yeah, my parents liked Rod Stewart, it’s his song. Well. I’m in a hip coffee shop out of town last week, and I hear this weird retro version. Only it’s not retro, it’s original, it’s CAT STEVENS. Meow. Super dumb realization, but it’s true that there’s nothing new under the sun. I like your interesting facts, can you blow my mind with something else?

– Deep Thoughts

Dear Heavy Thinker,

Sure, here you go: turns out, Cat wrote the song, but his recording isn’t even the first cut—that belongs to P. P. Arnold. There’s no way she went by her initials in school, right? Anyway, I hope you tipped the hip baristas in that hip coffee shop an extra 5-7% for broadening your scope of musical knowledge. Unless it was just Spotify doing its thang, which it probably was.

– The second cut still hurts, Rachel