The post-pandemic tipping conventions mean that you can't be price sensitive and remain sane. What was a sincere risk gratuity two years ago is now a social exp

The post-pandemic tipping conventions mean that you can't be price sensitive and remain sane. What was a sincere risk gratuity two years ago is now a social expectation, and while food delivery and ridesharing in cities is very convenient, the service-class it created implies that now middle income people need to exercise some noblesse oblige to offer some dignity and offset some of the class resentment these jobs create. A tip now is whatever you wouldn't be embarassed to accept in their position. In Canada, advertised prices for anything that isn't sitting on a shelf are basically a meaningless anchor number. We have a sales tax of 13% on everything, and then once you add the various service, subscription, card tap processing fees, credit card fees, warranty, "donation," and other fees, it's prudent to add at least 35% to any advertised price in your budget. My answer was to avoid businesses that have more than one or two locations and shop at locally owned places as much as possible. Personally I just left the city as soon as I could afford to, for many reasons, but one of them was the effects of the inequality from importing people en masse from poor countries to do service jobs for the nouveau bourgeois was just becoming vulgar. No level of tipping in the world will change the relationship between a largely publicly funded middle class and the people who massage them, do their nails, drive them around, deliver their food, walk their small dogs, and clean their short term rentals. It's gross. Where possible, I opt out.