Airport Self-Checkout Kiosk Automatically Adds 18 Percent Tip, Sparking Anger: ‘Ridiculous’

A kiosk with no cashier is asking people for a tip — raising questions about where the tip is going.

Last month, TikTok user Clay Moss posted a video of himself buying a bottle of water at Newark Liberty International Airport and showed followers that the self-checkout kiosk automatically added an automatic 18 percent tip to his bill. Moss had to change the tip to zero manually.

“Has tipping culture gotten out of hand?” Moss wrote over the video.

Social media users took to the comments, expressing disapproval over the automatic tip.

“Ridiculous these companies just cant screw us enough,” one wrote.

“They should be tipping you for doing it yourself!!” a second lamented.

“Good you saw that – imagine how many people rush through there possibly not even noticing,” a third pointed out.

“So dystopian,” a fourth added.

A Port Authority spokesperson told News 12 New Jersey that “Tipping prompts have no place at self-checkout kiosks and we have previously worked with OTG to ensure customers do not receive those prompts.”

“We have contacted OTG about the kiosk shown in the video and expect the tipping option to be removed immediately,” the spokesperson continued. “We will also confirm that no other self-checkout kiosks are prompting customers for tips.”

In 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe told CBS News, “Machines don’t have the same protections as tipping human employees, so while the law requires that something called a ‘tip’ has to go to employees, when you’re tipping a machine, you can’t be quite so sure.”

Wolfe also said at the time that “researchers are worried that companies are using tips as a way to put the onus on consumers for paying their employees rather than raising wages themselves.”

As First for Money previously reported, tipping isn’t the only additional cost people need to watch for, as some restaurants charge an “admin fee.”