Customers are now tipping their nonexistent workers.
An airport bookshop hit a traveler with a shock “employee retention fee” — despite the buyer scanning and bagging his own merchandise at a self-checkout machine, triggering a wave of livid backlash on-line.
The outrage erupted after an exasperated flyer posted a image of his receipt from the Bryant Park Market inside JFK Airport’s Terminal 5 in Queens on Reddit’s r/EndTipping discussion board.
Hudson operates a number of markets across JFK International Airport, with Bryant Park Market in Terminal 5. Reddit
The traveler posted that he had tried to purchase a single e book — “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of Edmund Fitzgerald” — priced at $21.99 before boarding an early-morning flight.
But when the invoice printed, the buyer was shocked to discover a $2.01 gross sales tax tacked on alongside a sneaky $0.66 cost labeled as an “employee benefit.” Printed at the backside of the receipt, it explicitly declared that a 3% surcharge is levied to fund worker retention applications — and clarified, in daring letters, that the added charge “is not a gratuity.”
The shopper uploaded the invoice to Reddit’s in style r/EndTipping discussion board — a digital haven for fed-up customers who often air their grievances over tipping fatigue and surprising venue surcharges, to vent about the social strain to tip in non-traditional service settings.
“I just wanted to buy a book before my 6 a.m. flight. And naturally, they tax on top of the added fee as well! ‘Not a gratuity,’” the infuriated airport shopper wrote in his viral publish.
Bryant Park Market opened in March 2024 as a collaboration between Bryant Park Corporation and Hudson. Anton Ivanov Photo – inventory.adobe.com
Fellow anti-tippers instantly flooded the feedback, blasting the airport vendor for placing labor prices onto self-serving prospects.
“I’d be so pi**ed I’d turn right around and return the book. I refuse to participate in this sort of rip-off bulls**t. It’s infuriating,” one enraged commenter fumed.
“That would be all for me. I would be done there. It’s the owner’s choice to apply it, but it’s mine to shop elsewhere,” another chimed in.
“That is actually a forced gratuity regardless of what name they put on it,” wrote a third offended Redditor.
The airport incident is just the newest instance of retail retailers and eateries quietly tacking hidden prices onto closing payments, following a latest uproar from a diner who claimed he was “extorted” after a restaurant chain slapped an surprising “admin fee” onto his burger order.
The public anger highlights a sweeping nationwide pushback against aggressive fee prompts: a latest examine revealed that 78% of Americans really feel tipping tradition has gotten utterly out of management, while 74% famous that digital touchscreens recurrently nudge prospects with ever-increasing default tip percentages.
When confronted by automated checkout screens, 59% of customers admitted to tipping purely out of guilt even when receiving poor service, expressing rising resentment over increasing charge expectations and runaway gratuity prompts.
Source hyperlink
