The prompt is a piece of hardware before it is a custom. Square, Toast and Clover (the three largest makers of digital tip software) sell countertop tablets that swivel toward the customer at the moment of payment with tip percentages already filled in. That screen moved tipping from private arithmetic done after a meal to a public choice made in front of the person serving you and the queue behind you, and frequently before the service has happened at all: the format can request a tip prior to receiving the full completion of a paid service. The pandemic widened where it appeared, as customers tipped generously at small businesses and to lower-wage workers who had never been tipped before, and the prompts stayed after the reason for them passed. Etiquette researcher Diane Gottsman describes customers as overwhelmed by the little piece of technology looking them in the face. That is the effect usually called guilt-tipping. That is why the split is not really about generosity. One side is reacting to being asked more often, in more places, earlier, and in public; the other is reacting to money reaching counter staff who were previously outside the tipping system entirely.