Strange Defaults

There are a couple of strange yet common expectations held for consumers in the United States:

• Tipping regardless of the quality of service or, worse, being asked to tip before receiving any service.
• Being asked after paying for groceries if we would like to ‘round up’ our transaction for Insert Obscure Charity Name.

As a former server I think we should tip…but only when it’s for service we believe was good.

I think we should donate to charity if we are able to...but only when we believe in what the charity is doing and have some understanding of how the funds are used.

These are fairly benign examples of a more serious problem: defaulting to a behavior before considering if it even makes sense.

It doesn’t hurt — if anything it’s to our benefit — to periodically revisit the behaviors we’ve become accustomed to and ask ourselves:

Why?