I always tip 20%, but I have always wondered why restaurants don't pay their employees what every other service industry pays their employees so they can earn a decent living. Why does the consumer have to subsidize their income. Don't restaurants make a good profit?

I think it would be a huge mistake to eliminate tipping and pay only a higher than minimum hourly wage. Tipping is immediate and direct feedback a customer gives about the server's job performance. Tipping INCENTIVIZES the server to do more for the customer than just appear to take the order and slap down the drinks and food and then leave.....leaving the customer without cutlery when he just got a steak, without a drink refill, or having the steak be too raw and nobody comes back to correct things.

Tipping also allows the server to develop "regulars" who come back and ask for him/her, and that is a good chance for young servers to see how to grow a business, or kill one with laziness and doing only the bare minimum.

This work is one of the best ways to learn how free enterprise works and how commissioned sales can become a career for a person who is motivated....and courteous......and hustles to please the customer.

We would need then to apply that principle to every minimum or slightly above minimum wage earner. Those employees would only need to do a good job if they would reap a great tip, ie: sales assistants in stores, checkers at the grocery stores, yard people, babysitters and on and on goes the list.

These employees whose wages are tipped based, are having their job performance rated and graded by all different personality types in order to earn a decent wage and it is the strangest thing to me.

Pay the servers an appropriate wage and fire them if they don't do a good job, like every other employment. Why all the games for adequate compensation?

Ilovetv: Unfortunately, many people don't know the restaurant business and how the business operates. When I was a bit older and left home, my mother worked as a cook in a Popular Mom & Pop restaurant in my home town so I use to hear About some of the "inner workings" of the restaurant business. Interesting---but discussion perhaps for another Thread.

Suffice it to say that Servers and Cooks are some of the most unappreciated workers in our economy IMHO. I have little respect for someone who doesn't tip their Server according to the service they receive.

And many of us have worked as servers and remember all the of the other duties we had in addition to serving which may have included a financial responsibility for broken or missing items from a service.

Even a good day with tips wouldn't be much if someone decided to lift a beer stein or two and and the servers were held responsible. Hopefully, that policy has been changed.

This is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard from tipping! What is wrong with people?

First of all if you don't want to leave a tip I like the idea of "stay home & eat a ham sandwich"

Seriously tho, do you think the waiter knows if they receive 15, 20 or 25%, I don't think they do the math as they hand out the tabs.

they jam it in their pocket.

It's up to us to be fair, I also like to leave cash for the tip if using a CC.

Which leads me to another ? how do they keep trac of what they are owed on CC tips and when do they receive the money.

This is where dining at a restaurant is different from eating fast food in McDonalds or in the car at Wendy's parking lot.

At the fast food place, once the tray or paper sack of food is handed over the counter or out the drive-thru window, that employee is done with the customer. Not so in a dining establishment where constant interaction between server and customer is required, and the server must pay close attention to their orders pending at the bar and in the kitchen, and getting everything entered into the computer for accurate ordering and billing, while paying close, gracious attention to their customers......

This kind of service is largely a multi-tasking balancing act and an art, not a production-line process (a robotic arm could be used to open the window and hand the bagged McDonald's order out the drive thru window to the person in the car).

Restaurant servers are constantly interacting with and have to rely on:
- kitchen staff (moody, histrionic chefs, and the cooks who don't show up);
- bartenders who are busy schmoozing their bar patrons and are supposed to fill the server's orders too;
- busboys in their first job at age 16 who have never cleared dishes or cleaned a table at home before;
- hostesses who can load up your section suddenly with 6 tables full of demanding cheapskates with bratty, screaming kids, while the pet (suck-up) server gets the well-mannered singles and couples that are regulars that leave outstanding tips; and with
- the customers at his/her tables.

With all that going on, the server needs incentives to smile and stay courteous and gracious, and to keep the customer at the top of the list of whom to be patient and gracious with. Tipping is a good way to incentivize the server to put the customer first and keep the customer from having ANY idea of what kind of clamor is going on behind the scenes in the kitchen and outside the back door where smoke breaks are being taken by cooks while your customer has been waiting for their entree for 30 or 40 minutes.

Being a good server takes a huge skill set and exemplary people skills!

Thus, pay a decent wage. Why subject these people to the whims of others and what they MAY receive in tips.

We always tip for good service and a bigger tip (over 20%) for great service. I can remember twice that I left less than 10% due to horrible, horrible service t not in TV. My wife had advised me to leave nothing but I can't do that. Here's a thought....when we stay two nights plus in a hotel, we always tip the housekeeper. Now that can be a tough and unrewarding job for some.

This posting makes me feel sad to find out there are people who punish servers for their distasteful mentality. Hopefully, they are in the minority and don't frequent our restaurants too often. If they can't afford to add a fair gratuity to their bill they shouldn't be eating out.

A granddaughter was working as a server in an upscale steak house in Austin, Texas, during her senior year in college. She came home with some real horror stories about undertipping. One of her associates served a group a dinner that came to over $200 and was left a $5.00 tip.

The granddaughter, who is attractive, intelligent and attentive generally does exceptionally well on tips.

Where she worked there was a practice of sharing a portion of the tip income with the busboys.

For years I have tipped 20 percent of the check (including tax), rounded up to the next dollar. Usually if the check includes a pre-determined 18 percent "suggested" tip I just let it go at that. Just lazy I guess.

If the service is not attentive I tip 20 percent on the meal cost (not including tax) and don't round the amount up.

If the service is actually substandard I lower the tip, perhaps down to ten percent. Always mindful that tips are the principal source of income for the server, I consider ten percent the floor for my tipping.

I don't foresee any change to the tipping practices in the food service industry in our country no matter how much some people resent it.

If these customers have a political question or comment, they should be addressing these to their elected officials not to their server or restaurant.

Political comments in lieu of a tip! Seriously. At last, have these people no shame?

I wonder myself how people could do it? Do they truly NOT know that these hardworking people do not have a salary? Can they not place themselves in another persons shoes just for a minute? Have they stood on their feet for eight or nine hours until they ached?

Did no one in their family ever work as a server?

I don't know P. How can people be so unfeeling?