More Businesses Are Asking Customers For Tips — Should You? Don't Make These 5 'Guilt-Tipping' Mistakes. Tipping can be a great way for your employees to earn more — and to help mitigate your costs. But you have to do it right.

Been to a Starbucks lately?

If you have, then you've now officially experienced their (relatively) new "tip" screen when buying a coffee and it's definitely creating some "awkward" conversations. Before making the purchase, you're given options for tipping the staff. Starbucks, and other businesses big and small, are doing this to help their employees earn more money (and, let's agree) to help mitigate their own compensation costs. You can, of course, choose to select "no tip," but it's downright uncomfortable — for both the customers and employees. Some call it "guilt-tipping."

Tipping has become a controversial issue. It became big during Covid-19 where we tipped just about any hourly worker who was literally risking their lives to provide a service to us while we sat on our couches watching Netflix. But now that time has passed, things can get to normal, right? Wrong! Many businesses are still "strongly" encouraging their customers to tip. So should yours?