Sounds more like you’re describing US sales tax.

And really, it is. But if a waiter provides less service for me than a McDonalds server, you can bet that I feel that person deserves McDonalds wages. I haven’t seen anyone on here advocate not tipping. I’ve only seen people (such as Invictus) advocating not tipping for shitty service and that mandatory gratuity is not gratuity but a surcharge.

I once ate at this place here in Houston called Avalon Diner. When my date and I got there, the place was relatively empty. We started with this one younger girl who seemed to not care at all. When my date asked about where the milkshakes were in the menu, she pointed to some crappy clipart on the menu. The milkshakes were actually a few pages over. Very little talking occurred. When she came to drop off the milk shake, it was anything but delicate (I’d say she almost slammed the thing) without a word. After that, another waitress started serving us without any explanation. She too didn’t seem to care, and screwed up the order. Never come to check to see how things were, and the food was between par and subpar. We both agreed that this place was not worth tipping for. We left with the intention of never coming back, and I left a negative review on a website. To show even further that she didn’t deserve a tip, she looked at the tip amount immediately while we were still there, and scowled. That’s just poor etiquette for a waitress. This is one of the possible 3 or 4 times in my life that I have not tipped.

Sometimes the service is so terrible that the person really should be making only minimum wage. I mean, it’s not like they’re doing their job. A waiter/waitress should be courteous and should be there to provide a service. If I don’t get these things, they were not doing their job. If I feel like I’d have been better off going to the kitchen, giving them my order, and picking it up all myself, then they didn’t do their job.No one is advocating never to tip. Only not to tip in situations like the above.

People who have actually waited tables know that tips are rarely commensurate with effort, attention, and skill. They’re generally arbitrary based on how nice or terrible the customer is.

The healthcare industry and lawsuits works on the same principle. I’m going to guess that it shows up in some form in every interaction involving people.

you obviously know nothing about how waitstaff earn their money and what can happen when tips fall short of projections.

you are not paid minimum wage at Applebee’s.  you are paid LESS than minimum, and it is assumed you will recover the rest in tips.  tips are absolutely meant to be a significant part of a server’s wages. fact, no shit. this has been the case for decades.

People who have actually waited tables know that tips are rarely commensurate with effort, attention, and skill. They’re generally arbitrary based on how nice or terrible the customer is.

Cheap fucks have a myriad of excuses for why it’s okay to be a cheap fuck. If it wasn’t Obama, it’d be the very existence of tips, or “liberals” or “people on welfare”, etc.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70052-never-do-business-with-a-religious-son-of-a-bitch-his-word-ain-t

Unhappy customers are bad for business. So it is always going to be in a managers interest to weed out the staff who aren’t doing their job properly. So no I haven’t noticed any particular problem with service in my country. But I have also never eaten in the US, so I can’t comment on the comparison.

The best way I’ve found to deal with it is to assume that if a price tag says 10 dollars, you’ll be paying the equivalent of 10 euros / pounds for that item after everything has been added on.

If tip-only works better, then it should be stuck to.

I don’t see why people who serve food should be singled out. We should go to tip-only for everything. If you’re happy with the teller at your bank, you can tip her. She in turn, can tip out to the manager, and eventually the CEO will get a cut of all those tips instead of a salary or bonus.

Seems to me that though the gratuity system sucks, it might suck less than the others.  But I don’t really know for sure.  (I think it’d really be impossible to tell, honestly.)

I’m genuinely curious if providing the direct, customer-by-customer incentive of a tip results in a better experience for diners than a system of serves compensated by wages only.  
If tip-only works better, then it should be stuck to.  If another system works better, then we should change.

I will say that all of the servers and bartenders I’ve ever known did considerably better on tips than minimum wage.  

YOU may CHOOSE not to tip, but it IS expected, and you are considered a douche by an place you frequent and fail to. 

I can agree that it is a really shitty situation, irrational, illogical and wrong… but again, this is america, and  you know those are not sufficient reasons to prevent it. 

What’s really happening is you’re  paying the waitstaff directly for their work, instead of indirectly via the restaurant who then pay the staff.

I gather that eating out elsewhere in the world does not require tips, but a meal will cost you rather more up-front.

Whether it’s the current system, minimum-wage-plus-tips, or well-paid-and-no tips, it’s really probably a wash in the end.

That said, waiters in fine dining can easily clear $60k/yr working 4 shifts a week. I’m sure they’d love to lose that tip credit/minimum wage and go to to a nice $11/hr (which is still more than the cooks make).

This prompts a question – I have been *told* that service in many restaurants in cultures that don’t tip is frequently less than attentive.   Is this true?

I ask because a counter to the argument that servers should be paid a standard wage is: Tipping reinforces a merit-based service ethos; that is, if you’re a terrible server in the States, you’ll go hungry and quit or be fired.  

But elsewhere, where a server’s wages are independent of their actual service, no financial incentive exists to provide good service.

Is this argument incorrect?