Sure you can do these things in parking lots, but I expect most people would prefer a more pleasant and dignified space to perform recreational activities in if they were just as common and convenient to find as a parking lot.

Oh I mean, they certainly never invited us to take their eggs. But their pecks of protest were generally easy to ignore. 😅 The more vicious hens required more creative solutions.

I used to help raise and tend to chickens during my childhood. As adults chickens have an outer layer of stiff feathers on their wings and back which mainly function as protection against moisture and enhance mobility (fluttering, gliding, etc.), but beneath this layer there’s a layer of very soft down feathers which offer insulation against the cold. It’s best to feel how soft their down feathers are when they’re chicks, as their stiffer feathers haven’t grown in yet, but also if you spend a lot of time reaching under hens for their eggs you’ll find that their undersides still have a lot of softer feathers for nesting purposes.

If absolutely everybody stopped tipping in America this instant maybe something would change. But that’s not going to happen, just as voting tipping away won’t happen. It’s incredibly easy to sway people who have no opinion on the matter (more than you’d think) to believe that tips are good and necessary and actually beneficial to the worker. And the people/entities most motivated to argue this (employers) happen to have the money to throw into shifting public thought on the matter. No, the only real solution is worker organization, and the only way workers can organize is if they have the resources (time, energy, money) to do so, also external support can help.

A large portion of you in the replies don’t feel like they should be obligated to tip because they feel it’s up to the employer to properly compensate their workers, and yet they feel comfortable enjoying the product of these exploited workers’ labor. My question to all of you is, if you care about worker exploitation, why don’t you, the consumer, speak out against this practice directly? Call employers out, speak to the workers, see what you can do to help them organize. If you can’t be bothered to do any of that, consider not dog-piling on the worker for the faults of their employer by deciding not to tip and making it harder for workers to organize. It seems to me that by not tipping, you’re just helping employers and not workers.