Just after I read your entry, I hapened to see this on a local blog.

So if we stopped tipping and instead paid servers wages including the implied tip amount, theoretically consumers would pay the same cost. The only different would be that wages would depend on a more standard system instead of social norm/pressure.

I almost always tip 16%+ for lunch and 20% for dinner, but if gratuity was added onto the bill as restaurants do for larger parties, I usually tip only a little bit over. The out of pocket expense, to me, would remain the same.

I’m a waitress and bartender so I live off tips. If the country stopped tipping, restaurants would have to pay their servers and buspersons more for the ridiculously stressful job we have. This means that going out to dinner would be exponentially more expensive because the cost would be passed on to consumers.

While most of my examples were restaurants there are other areas where tipping expectations are vague: tipping on take- out, for instance. And fast casual places that use self service: some of their employees make minimum wage, some work for tips. It’s a mess.

Mostly because people, unlike yourself, don’t know what goes into the gratuity and how they get disbursed.