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[quote=Anonymous]So many of these extra charges are framed in a way to play off customer guilt. Like adding a charge for "the guys out their picking the grapes" is explicitly designed to make someone who is sitting there drinking wine feel bad about the hard labor that went into the wine and therefore pay more for it. Same with "employee wellness charges" or fees that are explained/justified as paying for employee benefits.

The fees that are justified for the business are also about guilt, and are often framed as "we're just a struggling small business, we need to charge this extra amount to get by." The Covid-charges really pushed these to a new level and I think a lot of small (and some not so small) businesses got in the habit of making this kind of "poor us" appeal to customers.

There are multiple problems with this but the biggest is that a business cannot do this on a permanent basis. Sure, on a short-term one off, loyal customers won't have a huge problem paying extra to help a business they like support their employees, or recover from an unforeseeable disaster, whether that's Covid or a fire. But it cannot be your permanent state because at some point people are like "get it together." It's a for profit business, not a non-profit or a family member. Your customers are not engaging in charity. Figure out how to structure your business so you an compensate and provide benefits for your employees as appropriate for your industry and business model, and don't turn it into some kind of charitable act via a special fee. After a crisis like Covid, it's understandable that a business might take time to get back on it's feet but at some point it's sink or swim -- either your model is successful or not, and passing the collection plate years later just feels manipulative. Maybe you should go out of business if it's this hard, you know?

I'm not a callous person but we're talking about commerce here. And I'm a person with my own problems -- it's not like the small businesses I patronize are helping me out when I have a childcare crisis or when my own business hits a snag. So this idea that I must always be giving them extra to help them doesn't make sense. As a one off, for a business I really like and want to stay open, sure. On a permanent basis? No, figure it out. If I can't write it off as a charitable donation, it's not charity. You just want more of my money to deliver the same thing (or often, less).[/quote]

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