The tipping thing is becoming less alien to me the longer I live in North America, but it still annoys me sometimes! For example, in Ontario, Canada, waiters etc. get $8.90 minimum wage (as opposed to the $10.25 someone e.g. working in a grocery store gets). In the UK, where I lived and worked as a bar tender, the normal salary will be around $9.14 Canadian aka pretty much the same. In Ontario, I am pretty much expected to leave 13-15% minimum for the waiter. In the UK, there is nothing additional, and yet they provide the same service. I struggle to get my head around it.

However, I do 'as in Rome' and do tip my waiter, provided the service was good. If it was bad I will a) seek out the manager, if I have the time and if they do (e.g. busy Sat night I am not going to sit around for half an hour waiting to speak to a manager) or b) leave no tip. A 'tip' is an acknowledgement of good service still in my mind. The fact it is more formalized here doesn't change that IMO - what I cannot get my head around is, after a meal with terrible service, someone leaving 'only' 10% - a typical dinner for 4 people with drinks easily runs $250 - like hell am I going to give someone $25 for doing a rubbish job! Especially when that server probably has another 9 tables, and a couple of seatings, meaning they are getting $500 a night (assuming everyone 'low balls for bad service' at 10%, let alone those who tip 15-20% just because that is what you do) for being TERRIBLE at their job! Heck, I'd like to get paid that sort of money for doing a terrible job - assuming 5 nights a week, they are making a six figure salary, which is probably a considerable amount more than some of the customer to whom they are giving the bad service! The one caveat, if it was the food that was bad, and the waiter did a good job, I wouldn't withold a tip (but if the food was bad I would demand a manager immediately, and any decent server would bring the manager over immediately, or deal with the issue themselves if they were able).