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The incident touched a nerve because almost everyone has stood at a tip screen lately wondering what they actually owe.
A regular customer at her local coffee shop dropped a dollar in the tip jar on her way out last week and ended up sparking a debate that a lot of people clearly needed to have.
She’d paid $5 for her coffee, skipped the card tip prompt at checkout, and left a bill in the jar on her way out the door. The barista noticed, glanced at the cash in her customer’s wallet, and said loudly enough for the room to hear: “Oh wow! A whole dollar… that’s SO generous! Thank you SO much.”
The customer, who goes by u/moonchildcountrygirl on Reddit, said she was rattled enough to wonder whether something was going to end up in her drink. When she posted about it online, Newsweek picked up the story and more than 800 comments followed.
Reddit’s reaction was not especially sympathetic to the barista. “Should have picked that dollar back,” was among the most upvoted responses. Others said they would have asked for a full refund on the drink. The OP herself landed on a version of that position: if a tip is going to be met with sarcasm, why tip at all?
But the incident is a little more complicated than a straightforward etiquette violation, because the math here actually favors the customer. A dollar on a $5 drink is a 20% tip, the same percentage most people consider the standard for a sit-down restaurant with table service. Industry veterans generally say a dollar a drink is a reasonable coffee shop tip, and that baristas at most cafés (unlike servers) are paid standard minimum wage rather than the lower tipped-employee rate that makes gratuities more essential.
None of which makes a public sarcastic remark the right response. But it does situate the incident inside a broader frustration that’s been building for a few years. A Pew Research Center survey found that 7 in 10 American adults say tipping is now expected in more places than it was a few years ago. A Bankrate survey found that 41% of Americans think tipping culture has gotten out of hand, and around 63% have at least one negative view about tipping overall. More than 60% agreed that employers should simply pay workers better so tips don’t have to fill the gap.
The tip jar and the checkout screen have become the place where all of that tension gets concentrated into a single uncomfortable moment. The barista’s comment was out of line. The customer’s dollar was not stingy. And the fact that it’s hard to say either of those things without someone disagreeing is probably the actual story.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
She planned a prank for the rehearsal dinner and cast herself as the victim. The groom had no idea.
Alexandra Lahde had been a couple of things on the night of her rehearsal dinner: a bride, a hostess, and, briefly, a corpse.
The 28-year-old barista from Canada had spent months planning the evening at Fairmont Banff Springs, one of the most storied hotels in the country. The decor was themed around old Hollywood glamour and detective fiction, with a vintage typewriter welcome sign, magnifying glass name tags, and moody florals and candles throughout the room. If any of her 30 guests noticed the clues, they kept quiet about it. When Alexandra clinked her wine glass to give a toast, nobody suspected a thing.
“I just wanted to take a second and thank you all so much for coming here,” she began. Then she started to cough. She tried to continue. She coughed again, clutched the counter beside her, and said, “Oh my God” before dropping to the floor. Two guests who had been in on it from the start called out, “She’s dead. She’s DEAD!” Her husband Ian rushed toward her. Before anyone else could react, a man in a detective costume burst through the doors, flashing a badge. “Nobody move! My name is Bert Hammel. I’m from a bad police department. I’ve been told there’s a murder,” he announced, before looking down at Alexandra’s motionless body. “I can’t feel a pulse. The bride has been poisoned.”
The evening was underway. The actor, Eric from the improv company THEY Improv, had been hired by Alexandra with help from her wedding planner Melissa Alison Events. The murder plot was tied to the Fairmont Banff itself, which has its own legendary ghost bride story. Selected guests had been pulled into a separate room before dinner, briefed on the plot, and given character roles to play. After the faux detective questioned them in front of the group, guests split into teams to solve the mystery.
Alexandra told People magazine that she had only learned the full script about 15 minutes before her guests arrived, which suited her perfectly. “I find I work best when I have little to no plan, so I went into it pretty blind,” she said, “only having practiced my expression and fall in the bathroom a few times before!”
The video, captured by videographer Alesia Hardy (@alesiafilms) of Alesia Films, has since gone massively viral. Viewers were particularly impressed by one logistical detail: the detective appeared within seconds of Alexandra hitting the floor, giving the groom and guests no time to spiral into genuine panic. “The fact that the detective was virtually immediate to signal that she was okay and it was a game is the PERFECT way to pull this off,” one commenter wrote.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
The vape-powered car tops out at 40 mph.
A British engineer-turned-YouTuber turned heads with a recent invention he created from trash. After building power banks and powering e-bikes with discarded disposable vape pens, Chris Doel transformed 500 vapes into a power source capable of driving a car up to 40 miles per hour.
On his YouTube channel, Doel documented the experiment. He recovered 500 discarded vape pens and used 3D printing to combine their batteries into a single 50-volt, 2.5-kilowatt battery pack. He then modified it to power a Reva G-Wiz, an early-2000s low-powered electric car. The vape battery pack didn’t just start the G-Wiz; it powered the car enough to travel 18 miles and reach speeds of up to 40 mph.
“I can’t believe this car has just accepted this crazy Frankenstein battery that I’ve just slapped in it,” Doel said in the video.
Doel’s feat wasn’t just a display of ingenuity; it also highlighted a growing problem—specifically, the mounting burden of landfill waste. According to a 2024 report by Wired, 137 billion pounds of e-waste, including vape pens, are generated each year. Only one quarter of that waste is recycled.
As Doel pointed out, much of this waste isn’t just metal and materials going to waste, but also a loss of reusable energy.
“Unfortunately we seem to live in some crazy dystopia where buying these single use devices and then chucking them away is totally normalized, despite them having fully rechargeable lithium ion cells inside them,” Doel said.
Cumulative e-waste isn’t just environmentally harmful; it also poses risks to human health. The World Health Organization warns that much of this waste releases toxic chemicals and materials into soil and water. Prolonged exposure can negatively affect the health of children, pregnant women, and others.
To reduce the amount of e-waste filling landfills, it’s important to dispose of these products properly. After deleting all personal information, consider donating your electronics to a friend or an organization. Items with lithium-ion batteries, such as vape pens, shouldn’t be thrown in the regular trash.
You can search online to find a proper e-waste facility in your area. More information on how to properly dispose of or recycle e-waste is available on the United States Environmental Protection Agency website.
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