Did I miss a new rule?

It is not surprising that, in my important role as bipedal ATM, I would sometimes run out of cash. Often, therefore, I have nothing but 3 nickels and a penny in my wallet when it comes time to pay for the carry-out pizza, or the caramel latte and the vanilla steamer. At times like this, I am grateful that almost anywhere takes credit cards nowadays. But here’s the weird thing, and maybe it’s just my imagination. You hand over the card. The counter person hands you a credit slip to sign which--because you are at a food establishment--is identical to the sort you’d get at a full-service restaurant. In other words, it prints your cost with two blank lines underneath--one for “tip” and the other for “total.”

I don’t think the pizza guy expects me to tip him when he hands me my food and I hand him cash. There’s not even one of those little tip cups on the counter which have become so ubiquitous at everywhere from the snowball stand to the coffee shop.

But there’s something about being handed that credit card slip to sign, with the tip and total lines sitting there looking suggestively blank, that makes me imagine a scowl flitting briefly over the counter person’s face when I hand it back, signed, totalled, and tipless.