--- title: "Self-Checkout Machines Ridiculed for Asking for Tips" description: "Tipping workers is undeniably good, but with self-checkout machines prompting customers for optional tips, some wires are getting crossed." date: "2023-05-09" modified: "2023-05-09" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/self-checkout-tips" categories: - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "fintech" - "labor" - "self-checkout" - "the digest" --- # Self-Checkout Machines Ridiculed for Asking for Tips ![Tipping workers is undeniably good, but with self-checkout machines prompting customers for optional tips, some wires are getting crossed.]() *Close-up of unrecognizable man purchasing bananas at self-checkout kiosk in grocery store \Image: Getty Images\* ## TipBot Tipping workers is [undeniably good](), but we may officially be through the looking glass now that self-checkout machines — which [replace human cashiers]() — prompting customers for tips at the end of transactions. In [interviews with the *Wall Street Journal*](), confused consumers admitted to being confounded when self-checkout kiosks asked them if they wanted to tip. "They’re cutting labor costs by doing self-checkout," Ishita Jamar, a senior at Washington, DC's American University, told the newspaper. "So what’s the point of asking for a tip? And where is it going?" While multiple business owners who spoke with the *WSJ* said that these sorts of prompted tips are pooled among the humans working on staff, others — including some food labor researchers — are not as convinced. "Just the prompt in general is a bit of emotional blackmail," Garrett Bemiller, a twentysomething public relations worker in New York City, told the paper after being caught off guard by a tip prompt at a convenience store inside Newark International Airport. He and another person who spoke to the *WSJ* both said that they declined to tip at these airport self-checkouts. ## New Norms Holona Ochs, a Lehigh University assistant professor who [co-wrote two books on tipping](), told the *WSJ* that federal laws that require employers to pay tips out to employees don't apply to machines, and some employers are, thusly, exploiting "the high adherence to tipping norms as a way to generate more revenue for the company." Translation: there's no way to know for sure that a self-checkout-prompted tip is going to the actual workers and not into their bosses' pockets. At the end of the day, it's still definitely good to tip — but it's understandable that people are nonplussed by being asked for a tip by a machine, in an uncanny valley type of way that's becoming all too familiar. **More on labor:** [*A Shocking Number of Gig App Workers Were Murdered on the Job Last Year*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()