“Tip creep” is the name for a phenomenon recently noticed by many in which the number of jobs asking for tips, and the rate of tips being asked for, have been slowly increasing.

It’s a difficult cycle of inflation to combat. “After all,” we think to ourselves, “I know this company isn’t paying this person behind the counter enough, I should tip them a little.”

But the more we tip, the less pressure is on the company to pay a fair wage, which increases the needs for tips, and on and on.

It can get REALLY sketchy sometimes, like in this story from TikTok user @unsoliciteddrugfacts:

“So I’m in the Starbucks drive through line, I get my drink, it’s $5.25,” she begins.

“And when I went to pay, she didn’t give me the little screen that said if I wanted to ask for a tip or not. That’s ridiculous, that whole thing. But anyway, that’s a different story. I digress.”

“She just took my card, and I get a notification from Wells Fargo saying I was charged $10.25. So this was before I drove off. I, you know, rolled down my window and I was like, ‘excuse me, why was I charged $10.25 on my $5.25 drink?’ She got a little nervous and flustered. So she’s like, ‘oh, you didn’t tip me $5?’ I was like, ‘well, you didn’t even give me the little screen to choose a tip, so no, I didn’t tip you $5.’ So just be careful.”

“Because I think some of these employees, when they’re not showing you the screen to select a tip, they’re choosing what tip that they want to tip themselves, thinking that you’re not gonna notice. And people nowadays, so grimy, so scammy. Just be careful, check your statements.”

A lot of people are noticing this kind of thing:

Apparently you gotta check your documentation every time you get a dang coffee.

How deep does this con go?

Be thorough:

Also, hey Starbucks, you made 36 billion dollars in profit last year, pay your dang workers better.

Now that you’ve read that story, check out this one about a delivery driver who took a $400 grocery order back because she wasn’t given a tip.