Originally Posted by
drsmithy
Given you've just written a post largely agreeing with us "anti-tipping" people, it's hard to see how you get to that conclusion.
Coming from a non-tipping culture, this is how I calculate those numbers:
Complaints to the manager (terrible service, the server royally ....ed up and was made aware of it DURING the meal, the managers were involved, etc)
Complaints to the staff (bad service, inattentive server, meal was alright)
0% (normal service, decent meal) Or in other words doing the job they're being paid to do.
10-20%+ (above and beyond what I expect of a server at the appropriate restaurant)
I would say a large majority of anti-tipping people have never worked in the service industry. I base my opinion on observations of people that are strictly anti-tipping versus those that wish the system were different but understand WHY the system exists.
I hope in the "non-tipping" culture you're also factoring in higher restaurant prices. The fact is that a non-tipping culture has higher restaurant prices with the expectations that no tipping is necessary while the US and other parts of the world have lower restaurant prices and customers are asked to make up the difference in employee pay.
If at the end of the day the prices are relatively the same and the service is roughly the same why do people get so hostile towards tipping cultures? The fact is that in Europe if your service sucks you're still paying towards the employee's pay(excluding comps because those can also apply to the US) whereas in the US you can directly penalize the server for crappy service.
At the end of the day the only way I'd truly support a non-tipping system would be if they could eliminate bad servers... unfortunately that would create inflated prices because the good servers would be able to right their own compensation requests.