OutKick Readers Give Their Takes On Tipping And AI Recipes Are Wreaking Havoc

It feels like Tuesday, which can only mean one thing: it is Tuesday, and that means it's time for another edition of The Gripe Report!

In last week's edition of The Gripe Report — which I'm hearing is already being taught and dissected in some institutions of higher education — we talked about the state of tipping and how it has gotten completely out of hand.

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

I specifically gave a list of the worst places to tip, and I got a bunch of messages from readers offering their two cents on tipping.

I wanted to single out a couple of these messages, and then we'll get into a brand-new gripe I encountered recently, one that I didn't even know was a thing until I ran into it in the wild.

Alright, let's get into it…

OutKick readers offered some tales and insights on the state of tipping. (Getty Images)

We've Got Some Insights Into Haircut Tipping

I talked about how one of the most high-stakes tips out there is the barbershop tip, because stiffing the guy or gal cutting your hair could mean that next time you're leaving the barber chair with a Lou Ferrigno from The Incredible Hulk haircut.

Now, part of me thought that there was a chance I was being a little paranoid, but John checked in to tell us that while you get a bit of a grace period, your tips can impact your haircut:

I owned several children’s haircut outlets for years, and we knew who the lousy tippers were (4 kids, 4 buck tip total on a $70 service with kids crying and squirming and throwing up and whatnot) so I would give my tacit blessing to not feel really bad if the cuts weren’t up to snuff…this usually happened after 2-3 visit history of lousy tipping. 

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I knew it!

First, cutting kids' hair sounds like a nightmare, so tipping $4 on $70 should mean that not only do the kids get bum hairdos, the barber should be able to take a chunk out of your hair with the buzzers like it's a Jackass film.

I mean, my barber gets way more than when he cuts my hair and all I do is watch TV, drink coffee and only cry, squirm, and throw up a little.

Sure, I think it should be up to everyone whether they tip, but this is a good reminder that these decisions have consequences, and sometimes the consequences are walking out of Super Cuts looking like Pete Rose.

Wildest Tipping Situation Possibly Ever

Alright, so when it comes to tipping, there are some usual players.

Restaurants, bars, hotel housekeeping, valet, coffee shop, the aforementioned barber, etc.

But the rise of contactless payment has led to people getting tips — or at least asking for tips — for jobs that no sensible person would ever deem tip-worthy.

Brian sent in a message with what has got to be the wildest one I've ever heard:

This week's topic of tipping really hit home for me as so many places now want a tip after the customer does most of the work. I mean if the business sets up their model to have the customer do most of the work, I am not obligated to tip the workers for the little part they play in the whole matter.

The incident I want to share has to do with a concert I attended this past Fall. I wanted to get a t-shirt to mark the occasion. As you've touched on in the past, you don't have a physical ticket any longer. After placing my request, the worker literally turned around without taking a step and retrieved my shirt. Once ringing it up, the tablet was presented to me with a tip option! Really??!! You didn't MAKE the shirt. You didn't even have to make any true effort to retrieve the shirt, and you want a tip!! What the hell??!!! 

It seems these days, people want a tip just for showing up for their job and doing it no matter what level of effort is put in. Crazy.

Thanks for the Gripe Report, and keep it up.

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No problem, Brian, and thank you for this message because it made that muscle that sits right above my eye twitch with rage.

We might need to revisit concert t-shirts, because they deserve a little Gripe Report attention.

I'm well aware of the economics of concert t-shirts and why they cost what they do. It's a cocktail of inflation, lack of revenue from record sales and streaming, the cost of using union labor, and a lot more.

But that doesn't make paying $50+ for a t-shirt suck any less.

So, the idea that they would think that someone would shell out that kind of money and then tip someone for doing nothing by handing over a t-shirt is so insane, I almost have to respect it a little.

If it were me, after every shirt I handed over, I'd wipe the sweat from my brow and let out a loud, "Phew!" that way people would be tricked into thinking I was working really hard and would be inclined to tip more.

Of course, this would require the shopper to look past the fact that all I had done was hand them a goddamn t-shirt!

AI can do some great things, telling the difference between two chicken chains' sauces is not one of them. (Getty Images)

AI Recipes

Well, that's enough about tips for now. I've got something else to gripe about. 

I don’t need to tell you this, but artificial intelligence is officially here to stay, and honestly, it feels like a matter of time before it just totally takes over, because it’s already seeping into areas of our lives where it does not need to be. 

Now, AI is figuring out recipes, but has no idea what it’s doing.

So, like many people, when I want to make something, I look up a recipe online and use that as a jumping off point. That’s not new. People have been posting recipes on the internet — usually after a long, boring story about why their dumb kids like it so much — and have been doing so for decades at this point. 

But what people sometimes forget is that you can use the internet to figure out how to make facsimiles of your favorite things from your favorite restaurants.

So, for me, that’s Huey Magoo’s sauce.

If you have no clue what that is, Huey Magoo’s is a chicken finger place, and their sauce is phenomenal. To compare it to something most people will know, it’s like Raising Cane’s sauce, but even better. 

I wanted to whip up a batch to go with some chicken tenders I was grilling.

I got all the ingredients out and started dumping them into a bowl, following the recipe. However, my fiancée noticed something.

"It doesn’t look like the right color," she said. 

She was right. Magoo’s sauce is kind of pinkish, while the sauce I was whipping up was orangy yellow.

I continued to follow the recipe, and when it came time to taste, we were perplexed because the sauce came out tasting nothing like the Huey Magoo’s sauce we set out to make, but was a dead ringer for Chick-fil-A sauce in both look and taste.

I looked back at the recipe to make sure I was looking at the right one, and while it said "Huey Magoo’s Sayce" at the top, I missed the part where it said "AI-generated recipe." 

This revelation gave me mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was pissed that I had been led astray and spent the time whisking up the wrong sauce.

On the other hand, I felt good about AI not taking my job, because I feel safe until it can discern the difference between two chicken joints.

Whoever decides to turn loose on replicating recipes when they can’t taste things should have their internet privileges revoked. 

Also, this seems like a slippery slope. I followed the recipe because I trusted it. Thank god I was making chicken tender sauce and not following AI directions to jump a car or mix up some kind of cleaning solution that called for a special blend of bleach and ammonia.

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Well, that's it for this week, folks!

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to send in those gripes for a future edition of The Gripe Report!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com