Originally Posted by
cepheid
It's your problem in the sense that you are deliberately exploiting their decision for your own gain and at their expense, and it is ultimately your action that deprives them of pay. If you are a proponent of personal responsibility and accountability, as I am and as you seem to be, then you must acknowledge that while the server is at fault for working in an unfair industry, you are at fault for exploiting that unfairness by directly depriving them of their expected pay. Sure, maybe it's unfair that the employer put you in that position to begin with... nevertheless, you must accept that you are exploiting that unfairness.
I am not depriving the employee of anything other than a bribe, and a bribe that some here feel must be paid even for poor performance. Sorry, but I don't participate in bribery.
What the employer does with the employees is a free market issue. If waiters don't like how the pay is structured they need to find a new job. If the pool of candidates for wait staff dries up the wages will go up. Simple supply and demand, and it happens all over the country.
Originally Posted by
cepheid
Out of curiosity, do you apply this same philosophy to everything? For example, do you feel that Board of Health regulations regarding restaurant sanitation should be dissolved, because if customers get sick, it's due to their own decisions to eat at unsanitary restaurants? Do you feel that OSHA and Worker's Comp regulations should be dissolved because if employees get injured, it's because of their own decisions to work at places with unsafe conditions? Yes, these are hyperbolic questions... but I'm curious as to whether you follow the logic of complete personal responsibility to these inevitable ends.
It appears you have answered your own questions.
But to provide you some insight, no, I agree with government rules regarding health and safety.