Was shopping at two separate national grocery chains in the US during the past week, one for grocery pickup and the other for lane checkout after work.
I don’t typically tip for everyday duties, but the grocery pickup folks loaded my car in freezing weather and the checkout had a bagger that loaded everything quicker than I could finish my transaction. I was grateful in both cases and wanted to show my appreciation.
“I can’t accept that – I’m hourly” was the response I literally received from both of them. They also held up their hands like I had a knife pointed at them.
The pickup person looked back at the building and up at the camera. “If they see me take that then I’ll be fired.” At checkout, the cashier immediately looked back and said “He’s right, we can’t do that, we’re hourly” like he needed backup and reiteration for it.
I don’t rightly mind if a person wants to reject it themselves because they’re not interested, but to see the hard-coded response and fear to a simple kind gesture was outright disheartening.