Over the last three years, consumers are feeling the financial pressure of the increase in inflation for goods. There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight and customers are now starting to see retailers roll out a new tipping features at self-checkout machines.

According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, companies, which reportedly include coffee shops, airports, bakeries, and sports stadiums, have introduced a self-serve tipping option, where customers can choose to leave tips, despite having to place their own order on self-checkout machines, all while having minimal to zero interaction with any employees.

Customers report the extra financial squeeze they feel to leave a tip, but are questioning where and to whom the extra money is actually going to.

The justification from the businesses are they are taking advantage of an opportunity. Business owners believe that the prompt for a tip can help boost staff pay. However, customers have begun to question where exactly the extra cash is going, given self-checkout actual work is being done by the customer. If the business is cutting labor costs by requiring the customer to self-checkout, what exactly is the point of asking for a tip?

The newly added self-checkout gratuity option would fall under the phenomenon of “tip creep,” which prompts customers to leave higher tips in transactional situations. Self-tipping is described as a way to guilt-trip the person into tipping on something when they typically wouldn’t. Explained as an emotional blackmail as the business asks to add a 10% to 20% tip on a $6 water bottle at an self-checkout machine.

Reportedly, companies have expressed the tipping prompts are fully optional, and that  the extra gratuity is split between all employees.

However, some worry that tips at a self-checkout machine might not actually make it to the employees since protections from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to tipped workers don’t extend to machines. Experts feel that self-checkout tipping exploits the tipping norms as a way to actually generate more revenue for the company.

The arrival of the self-checkout tipping option has stirred up a lot of debate with customers and is one to be aware of as a consumer.