Bartender canceled my transaction and forced me to tip

I am usually a fairly good tipper, but right now I’m in my final semester of nursing school and making absolutely zero money. In fact, I’m paying for the privilege of doing the full workload of a registered nurse 😭

Anyways, where I live, bartenders/servers/whatever make at least minimum wage, then tips on top of that. These days, I tip about 18% for good service, and less for bad. And if you’re just handing me a can or a shot I probably won’t tip.

I went to the casino with my friends for a birthday. A couple of my friends bought shots first and I didn’t think they tipped so I thought, okay, I guess that’s fine. So I order my shot, it’s 8.50$….kinda expensive but whatever. And the tip screen shows up starting at 18%….I just click no tip because sorry but, you didn’t really provide much of a service for pouring an ounce of vodka for me. The bartender grabs the machine and says to me, “No tip? No no no, you can’t do that.” Then he cancels the transaction and restarts the process on the machine. I try to tell him, I’d tip next time, this is my first drink and I haven’t won any money yet or anything. He says “the amount of times I’ve heard that….” I’m embarrassed and after he aggressively takes the machine to bring it back to the tip screen, I click 18%. He gives me the drink and that’s the end of that.

I think to myself, maybe you have to tip at the casino? Well, I looked into it, and no, a tip is optional anywhere.

I really did not like this interaction. It felt super aggressive. And he was apparently a bit too familiar with one of my friends too, touching her arm. It made me think, would he have tried this on a man? Did he think I would just get embarrassed and confused and tip? Because that is what happened. Some people have an attitude for no reason. I have people get mad at me because I didn’t bring them jello fast enough while I was dealing with someone else’s blood pressure tanking, and I’m much more gracious about it while not getting a cent.