You will be asked ‘do you want to add a tip?’ a billion times this week. Go ahead and do it, I say.

Opinion editor Clay Wirestone argues you should make a practice of leaving a tip whether you want to or not. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

I try to tip well.

I can tell I’m growing older because I instinctively recoil at the number of receipts and checkout terminals that now include a line for tips. You can hardly buy a meal, drink or some kind of personal service without also being asked to judge someone via gratuity. That’s the kind of complaint that my forefathers and foremothers in the column writing business would have chewed over to their obvious delight in the 1960s or 1970s.

But take a look at that Kansas minimum wage, still stuck at $7.25 an hour. That works out to $290 a week, or $15,080 per year, both before taxes and assuming you work full time. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, it costs an average of $35,185 a year to live in the Sunflower State.

Those whose income includes tips, meanwhile, can receive a far lower hourly wage — tips are meant to make up the difference.

So pay up, my friends.

I’m old enough to remember when the adults around me considered a 10% tip adequate. Within my quarter-century as an adult, that percentage shifted upward to 15%. At least since the COVID-19 pandemic, a basic tip among civilized folk has hovered at 20%.

This leads to surprising difficulties with arithmetic. Once can figure out 10% easily enough — 15% means a dollar or two above whatever you were going to tip. But calculating 20% requires mental multiplication. Depending on your comfort level with times tables, that’s a challenge.

Those gratuities can also ding the proverbial pocketbook. A dinner for two at mid-level restaurant can easily top $50. A 20% tip, at a minimum means, $10 extra. If you go to a truly nice place or receive exceptional service anywhere, you’ll probably want to throw in a few dollars extra.

We have shifted from tipping being a way to reward exceptional service to an expected charge supporting service workers. In Europe, locals don’t tip much or at all. But companies also pay living wages there. As a U.S. consumer, I’m willing to help make up the difference.

If the pandemic didn’t teach us any other lessons, it surely proved that those who deliver food orders and shop for us at grocery stores deserve more than the minimum. Period.

Perhaps as a result, we’ve seen tipping spread through the culture like a gelatinous blob.

“The reason people believe this is because it’s true,” Cornell University professor Mike Lynn told AARP. “They’re being asked by more people to leave tips and asked to leave larger amounts.”

That doesn’t mean anyone has to enjoy tipping. I suspect the problem comes down to giving people too much choice. Few of us mind fuel taxes, because service stations include them in the cost of a gallon of gas. Likewise, those with mortgages might notice property taxes less because banks add them to monthly payments. Retirees who own their houses outright pay those taxes separately — and they sure notice them.

In a perfect world, businesses would pay workers what they’re worth. Innumerable tip lines and required calculations would disappear. Just think: The people we rely upon across society to serve us could afford to live in that society!

Tipping might just return to its status as a recognition of superior service.

We don’t live in a perfect world, though. Suck it up and help pay people what they’re worth. They’re only your fellow human beings.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.