Increasingly in the U.S., I find that when you get take-out food, or order something at a counter like ice cream to eat in the shop, are served at the counter—and are paying with a credit card—you are asked on the electronic-payment pad if you’d like to leave a tip. Sometimes the lowest tip you can leave is 20%. This practice seems to have arisen only in the last few years.

This feels coercive to me, and always puts me in a bind. I always presume that the workers in such places are paid a decent wage, and aren’t, like servers in restaurants, dependent on tips for their income. On the other hand, the counter people do do you a service—but so does someone who helps you order a pair of glasses at Costco.  But of course there are also the cooks, who are probably paid very little.

In restaurants, taxis, and the like the minimum tip I leave is 15%, but it’s almost always 20%, and more if the service is especially good. But when faced with one of these “would you like to leave a tip?” pads, I feel like they’re playing on one’s guilt to make extra cash. (You do not face this dilemma, by the way, when paying with currency.) Sometimes I leave 10%, sometimes 15%, and sometimes 0%, but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Does this make me a bad person?

I note that in places where I go often, and where they know me, I leave a tip in the tip jar every second or third visit. But why should they have to know me? I don’t do that to get any extra service.

The solution, as always, is to pay servers a decent wage so that tips are not expected, and where one tips as a thank-you for especially good service: as in New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) France. I would gladly pay higher prices for my food so that servers, cooks, and other workers could make a decent wage, for then one would not be faced with the dilemma of how much to tip. In France, for example, the gratuities are included in the price of food, and that’s stated on the menu. In such cases, as in bistros, I leave a few Euros—pocket change—as do the French.

Everyone would be much better off if servers were paid a decent wage and anything you leave them wouldn’t be an obligation, but a genuine “thank you” for good service.