In many countries of the world, tipping is a weird, often even impolite thing to do. Because plenty of companies pay their employees fairly, meaning that their income does not have to be subsidised by tip money. It’s not part of any expectations or implied contracts of becoming a customer – but while it’s never expected, there’s no denying that it doesn’t come as something of a nice surprise to employees in the UK, for example, if they do receive a tip.

Of course, tipping is rarely fair. Plenty of folks’ work goes into the making and retail of a certain product, and unfortunately the tip tends to simply go into the hand or pocket of a waiter or cashier, even though they were only responsible for a small part of the service. So when staff at the home improvement store in this story saw that one employee was garnering plenty of work lifting Christmas trees onto Customers’ trucks, they put two and two together to make an assumption about the tips this kid much be collecting.

Read on to find out what happened next.

AITA for working where I need to work and not telling anyone?

I am 22, male, and I have been working at a home improvement store for almost a year.

I was not around for the holidays last year so this is my first time, but I do know that store policy is that we can’t take tips, but people do and keep it under the table.

I’ve been working in our tree lot for the past few weeks helping customers pick trees, cut trees, bag trees, check receipts and load and tie down trees. I’ve been hopping around doing all of the things listed above as often as I can but I keep getting stuck loading and tying down trees to people’s cars.

Every now and then a customer will offer a tip and I’ll just quietly accept it and not talk about it. I NEVER ask for them, I just take them if offered.

But that’s starting to cause issues within the team.

The past few days we have had extra hands working inside the tent where we store, cut and bag the trees so I’ve been floating around a lot more and have been loading more cars to make it easier on my coworkers on the inside.

I’m mostly the only one of four loading all of the trees on cars.

Earlier today coworker A came up to me and said something close to “Hey, have you been making any tips!?” A few, why? “Well you’re hogging all of the tips, you should be telling us when you make some tips because you’re not doing any work! We’re in here doing all of the work cutting trees and you’re stealing all of the tips for yourself!”

I wasn’t trying to, I was just working wherever a customer needed help, and I keep getting stuck outside. But the coworker said, “No you’re not! You’re not working at all and we’re doing all of the heavy lifting!”

Read on to find out what happened next.

After that Coworker A walked away as I stood there stunned because I was just doing my job and not trying to get tips. Coworker B then walked up to me to ask what happened and I told him, but he never answered and just walked away. Later on I talked to Coworker C and he said that I was just doing my job and he didn’t know what was up with Coworker A.

Later on while I was walking back from my break I saw that there was a line of people waiting to get their trees tied to their cars, so I went up and started loading them. Side note, I made zero tips during this and just tied trees to cars.

After I was done Coworker B came up to me and said “Coworker A was right, you’re not pulling your weight and just trying to steal all of the tips while we’re in here working out butts off!” I told them that I’m not trying to take any tips, I’m just clearing out the line of cars. But Coworker B told me, “No you’re not, you’re just trying to not have to work hard like the rest of us”

I don’t know, I’ve been just working where I need to and helping customers when I see them, am I doing something wrong?

AITA?

It’s very clear that this employee is not trying to get tips – not at all.

Rather, he’s just trying his best to do his job and support the customers with what they need.

And if his colleagues are unwilling to do this? It’s probably why they’re low on tips themselves!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel worker who doesn’t want to let guests reserve handicapped parking spots in advance.

Let’s see what folk on Reddit made of this.

This person encouraged the employee to brush off the colleague comments.

While others thought the problem was wholly with his coworkers.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought he should start denying that customers had tipped him.

Really, it’s no wonder that this home improvement store banned tips from customers, since this one instance of tipping is creating such an atmosphere and rivalry between the staff. But the truth is that if the coworkers used their initiative like this guy, then they’d probably be rolling in tips too. Instead, they insisted in staying indoors to complete tasks that didn’t require them to go out in the cold or deal with customers. Well, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that was why they weren’t getting the tips.

And the co-worker was right, in part at least. The reason this employee was gathering tips – even though they’re technically against company policy – was because he was braving the cold and going directly to the customer to help them. With this in mind, it seems crazy that his coworkers refused to do the same, because if they’d been more open to being outside, they’d have very little to complain about – and perhaps this employee would have been able to complete some other tasks too.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a thrift store employee who refused to play “guess the price” without seeing the item in question.