A tip for businesses across Australia. Stop asking for one.

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Stop shoving your electronic payment systems in front of us demanding an extra 10 or 20 per cent simply because one of your employees performed the herculean task of making a coffee.

Stop trying to embarrass us into subsidising your employee wages by importing yet another American custom that has never been part of Australian culture.

And while you're at it, stop asking if we'd like to "round-up" the bill with a donation to a "preferred charity". It might only be a dollar or two. But what exactly does your charity do? And how much of that donation goes where it should?

Australians have traditionally had a simple relationship with tipping. We rarely do it. We might award an outstanding waiter with a few dollars or add a little something to the bill to acknowledge an exceptional meal.

But it's always been a spontaneous gesture of gratitude, not an obligation. And certainly never an exercise in public shaming because these days the option of tipping is starting to feel more like an ambush.

Buy a coffee and suddenly you're confronted by a screen asking if you care to pay a gratuity. For what? The highly complex act of filtering hot water through ground coffee beans? The arduous, death-defying effort of delivering a cup to a table?

These requests are often made in front of other customers, turning the once simple act of paying a bill into a guilt trip.

It's a practice spreading among restaurants, hairdressers, rideshare services and food delivery apps. Some even have the hide to suggest awarding a tip before the service is even provided. Imagine actors demanding a standing ovation ... before their performance.

The trend has become even more absurd when you consider how much more is expected of the modern customer. We queue up for self-service checkouts. We scan QR codes to order food, surrendering email addresses and other personal data.

So let's get this right. We purchase your product with our hard-earned money. We surrender our private information so you can email and text us incessantly requesting five-star reviews about your service.

And then, having generated income for your business, contributed to your employee wages and served as your marketing department on social media, you have the audacity to ask for a tip? How about tipping us?

It's the same reason why I try to avoid wearing clothes plastered with brand names. If I've paid $100 for a shirt and the manufacturer expects me to act as a walking billboard for them, they can damn well pay me a marketing fee.

The scourge of modern tipping owes much to electronic payment technology based on systems developed for the US market. There, tipping is entrenched as a way to supplement the incomes of millions of hospitality workers enduring miserable wages and conditions.

But here's the difference. Australia has a national minimum wage (currently $26.44 an hour), penalty rates, weekend and public holiday loadings and workplace protections that generations of workers and unionists fought long and........

© Canberra Times