Your McDonald’s analogy is flawed, because you’re not being waited on at the table at McD’s—it’s self service.
The plumber, or drywall contractor you hire isn’t paid (or should not be paid) until you inspect and are satisfied with their work, also, their work is guaranteed and warranted. A waiter’s service isn’t guaranteed.
To increase the odds of getting good service from the wait staff is to tip. If a waiter or waitress is paid whether they provide good service or lousy service, where is the incentive for good service. Good service translates to higher tips.
Your ‘solution’ is to increase prices at the restaurant. Not acceptable, sorry.
If your total price of dinner and tip is the same, why is it unacceptable?
McDonalds is NOT self-service. Unless you are going in the back and cooking your own food and packaging it and ringing it up, someone is serving you, and they can get it wrong.
What makes you give “good service” to your employer? Does he give you tips when you provide good service, or are you evaluated and given a salary?
Tips are in fact an excellent way to handle the “good service” question, as opposed to surveys of customers to find out which waiters are good and which are bad.
Except: how do you keep from getting bad service? If the employer is just paying $2.15 an hour, and each waiter is then compensated for good service with bigger tips, doesn’t that mean a bad waiter will get paid less, but will remain employed?
How does the employer find out that a waiter needs to be replaced? We still need feedback to the owner for bad service. Unless the owner gets to see the tips from each waiter, only then we don’t know if bad tips mean bad service, or bad customers.
And in restaurants with tipping, I don’t pay until all the work is done, and I have inspected the work. Meaning I got to look at the food, the cleanliness, and the service. I ate the food, and know if it tasted OK or not. I know if it was prepared properly or not.
And I pay after that. And if the food was bad, I send it back and get it corrected, and if it isn’t corrected I refuse to pay for the part that was bad. So in what way is this different from the plumber? Yes, food does not have a warranty, but neither does the woman who washes the windows. If I get food poisoning from a restaurant, I can go back and sue them for it, so that is kind of like a warranty.
Do you tip the guy that does your oil change?