A Starbucks customer on Reddit shared how they caught a barista adding a tip to their order. They said their order total was $12.20 but that they got charged $17.20. Thankfully, they received a bank notification alerting them to the charge.
“Barista added a tip himself in the drive-thru,” Reddit user u/Lex_Insanity0000 titled their post in a r/starbucks subreddit. The post has received 454 upvotes.
“Today I went through the drive-thru, order was $12.20. I paid with my card because I forgot to reload my app in time,” they explained. “I get alerts on my phone for card charges and it showed $17.20.”
So the Redditor said that prompted them to ask for a receipt. “I asked for a receipt (different barista than the one that cashed me out) and it showed a $5 tip was added to it,” they shared.
After alerting another barista to this, the customer said she voided the transaction. “I said, ‘I didn’t do that’ so she apologized, voided the whole thing, and didn’t charge me again. I said ‘thank you’ and left,” they said.
However, u/Lex_Insanity0000 feels conflicted about how they handled the situation.
“Should I have done something more? I don’t want to be a Karen but $5 is a lot and it didn’t seem like an honest mistake,” they asked.
Then, they raise the question, “And how many people are they doing this to?”
Starbucks’ tipping system
In 2022, Starbucks made it possible for customers to leave their baristas a tip. Customers and baristas have spoken out against this fairly new practice. Some Starbucks workers have admitted to hitting “no tip” on behalf of customers due to how uncomfortable they feel asking for a tip.
Has this occurred before?
But some Starbucks workers have been caught hitting something other than the “no tip” option for customers. In 2023, a frequent Starbucks customer named Zo said she noticed a barista tipping herself daily for a month. Recently, another customer by the TikTok handle @unsoliciteddrugfacts called out a barista for allegedly helping themselves to a 100% tip, making her total $10.25 when it should have been $5.25. She, like the Redditor, had banking notifications set up and was alerted to the charge by Wells Fargo.
The Daily Dot reached out to u/Lex_Insanity0000 via Reddit comment and direct message as well as to Starbucks via press email.
An honest mistake?
Many Starbucks baristas commented on the post, and they proposed suggestions about how this could’ve happened.
“If it was purposeful that’s absolutely wrong and illegal. If they handed the card reader out to you, it’s possible it was clicked by accident?” one user suggested. “It is a touch screen and $5 is closest to the edge so it’s possible it was just clicked when they tried to hand it out!”
“I did this once and thankfully realized before the customer had left. So embarrassing. Hopefully it was just a mistake, but sus nonetheless,” a second commented.
“To be fair, I genuinely have accidentally clicked the top button by accident. Human error,” another stated.
So, since the $5 tip amount was selected, as commenters say that’s the amount closest to the edge, it’s very likely that the whole thing was a genuine mistake. That is good news to Reddit user u/Lex_Insanity0000, who is glad that they didn’t escalate it further.
“Oh I didn’t even think about this! I’m really glad I wasn’t mean about it. Thank you!” they responded.
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