If you’ve purchased anything in the last few years — and being alive, you know darned well that you have — you know that tipping (not the cow kind) has exploded in recent years.

Perhaps you personally are not tipping more than you did in the past (cheapskate) but trust me, the expectation of tipping has skyrocketed: Tip jars are everywhere, often in businesses you’d never have seen one 5-plus years ago.

And in the event there is not a jar on the counter of wherever you are enjoying a wholesome monetary transaction, brace yourself, because a screen is about to be flipped at your face. Had the great American statesman and electrician Benjamin Franklin lived in the 21st century, surely his saying “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” would have been written as “Nothing is certain but death, taxes, tip jars and screens on which one can select a pre-calculated percentage for tips because, hoo boy, a lot of Americans are terrible at math. Also, a dollar bill saved is a dollar bill earned.”

These handy devices give shoppers options of tipping anywhere from 15% to — huh. I guess I’ve never scanned the other options far enough to know the upper end of the frontloaded percentages. I imagine it’s high, like, 79%. My eye tends to willfully lock on the cheaper portion of the tipping screen, due to my shock that 15% of whatever I’m buying is so high, because the price of everything is in nosebleed territory.

According to CNBC, the cost of groceries rose 20% between 2021 and 2023. That’s just groceries. Never mind rent, gas and other necessities. The other day I was in Safeway and saw a $10 carton of a dozen eggs. Soon, we will all need second jobs to afford eggs.

It’s not that I’m cheap, I mean, thrifty. Well, it’s not that I’m ONLY cheap/thrifty. It’s also that, like the majority of other Americans, I’m trying to keep my head above these rising financial waters. Which makes me sympathetic for service workers who are treading the same waters and rely on tips. If only there was someone else who might be in a position to pay these hardworking individuals a little bit for the work they’re doing. Hmm. Who could it be?

Tipping is also a weird extra step in what should be a simple, unawkward transaction. I haven’t operated a cash register since one of my first jobs at 18, but if I as a customer find the tipping process awkward and uncomfortable, imagine how it is for the clerk, barista, cashier, etc. Extra awkward: The barista turning to make that half-sweet oat milk mocha and people such as yours truly doing a whole show of putting a buck in the tip jar so that they will know my generosity.

However, when I’m tipping electronically, well, I’ve gotten better at spotting the custom tip option on the screen.

In short, tipping stinks. People just want to feel like customers at the businesses they patronize, not some kind of proxy members of their payroll departments.

Over the last few years, we’ve heard business owners complain that no one wants to work anymore. But people do want to work. They also want to pay mortgages and rent and eat good food and have time off and sleep in and take out-of-state vacations.

It’s time for a revolution. Tipping is never going to go away, and eggs are never going to be just handed to us. Therefore, we should ALL embrace tipping. Those of us working in the remaining fields where tipping is not yet a thing will just have to embrace it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a jar to hunt up for my desk. I’m saving up for eggs!