Tipping for picking up food? A little help here.

What’s the deal with tipping when you’re picking up takeout? I mean, if you have the restaurant deliver to you, sure, tip the delivery guy because he saved you a trip. And if you eat at the restaurant, tip the waitress because she’s doing all the running around. But if you're getting your ass in the car to pick up your chow, what exactly are you tipping for? For Ashley-cashier-person to turn around, grab a paper bag and hand it to you?

But, if you’re like me, you’re deathly afraid of doing the Scrooge-like faux pas of stiffing Ashley-cashier-person who’s just trying to get by. So hell yeah, throw her a few bucks. But what if you don’t have singles or a five?

You throw it on your credit card, right?

Wrong.

Not when the templated options on the receipt land in the standard 20% range, and you just put in a $100+ order for your Thursday night Texas hold ‘em game.  

Problem is, how embarrassing is it going to look to the credit card overlords when your coupla bucks tip works out to 5% of the total? Will these number deities know that you did your own pickup, which then overrules the standard 20% tip? Or will they think you’re a cheap-ass bastard, and tilt the karma table so that it crashes on your ass?

So let’s try this, Ms. Ashley-cashier-person: I’ll make sure to always have some singles or a fiver with me, and you make sure to put out a big-ass tiki jar with a few bucks already in it so I can loudly and ostentatiously plop in my share for your amazing hand-the-bag-to-me trick.

See, we can work this out.