I’m against the whole idea of tipping. I hate tipping. (I do it anyway). It’s just one of those old timey customs that never died, but should have.
Rhetorical questions: “How much should I tip?” Should I reduce the tip because they used the word “server”?”
15% has been the norm since before I was born (I am 55 years old). I have lately seen s push to get people to leave 20% as the new normal. I do not buy in to that.
If my service is about what I expect I tip 15%. If it is less than that I tip less and if it is better I tip over accordingly.
We go out to eat about once per month. We were never in to going out and spending wads of our hard-earned cash on dinner. Anyway, the last time we were out the waiter was really good and I tipped him 25% of a $100 meal tab.
My daughter was a waitress and now is a bartender while she finishes college. She is their best and yet there are people who will run up a large bill and then drop a dollar on the counter. Waiters and bartenders may get about $2 per hour and they really get paid by the tips. You may not like it but that is the way the business works and it probably will not change. Not leaving a decent tip to a good waiter/waitress or bartender is just slapping them in the face as they have to pay taxes on a percentage of the total tabs, and no, there are not many jobs out there to be had so it is hard for them to quit.
I hate tipping as well, simply because it is written to be ‘required’ by convention.
In another country if you wrote a ‘recommended tip’ on the receipt, they’d probably leave a dump in the chair. You don’t ‘recommend’ me anything. I have paid for the meal, and I will decide exactly if you deserve anything extra, and if you want any extra, you better perform pretty damn well.
The argument of ‘they need it to survive’ is moronic as well. People at McDonald’s earn sh7t money too. Do you tip them? I sure as hell don’t. And surely this means we shouldn’t tip at expensive restaurants where the servers are probably getting a larger paycheck than you.
If these people need to rely on scrounging and inappropriately coercing customers into handing over a large percentage of their food bill to the server, as if it’s some kind of tax, then they probably need to start looking for a new job.