So basically, people who have worked in restaurants/ bars feel like we should be tipping a lot, and the rest say no. I guess that is to be expected.

Myself, I always tip 15%, even when the service is horrible (I am afraid to leave less; I am such a wuss ). Average to good service gets somewhere around 18-20%. Great service gets 20-25%.

That being said... If tomorrow I adopt a kid, is my company obliged to pay me more because I now have a whole new set of costs? No -- I accepted my position for a set salary, and it is not the company's problem what happens to it once they pay me.

Waiters know before they take the job that they will be getting paid $2ish + tips, and that they will be tipping out. 15% (pre-tax) is widely-regarded as the standard tip amount in the US. So, if a person takes the job knowing all of this, then s/he should not complain about the minimum wage and suggest that restaurant patrons need to top-off their salaries.

The way I see it... in an average restaurant, my waiter/ waitress will spend about ~15 minutes over the course of an hour taking care of me. Since I usually see a waiter/ waitress in charge of several tables at once, I think this estimate of time is reasonable. It is a hard job, I won't deny it, but if it is the kind of job that a 16yo without a HS education can do, then it should be a minimum wage job, $6/ hr, $4 above the wage paid. My share of the "top-off" during the course of my meal should then be $1.

Even if I consider all the other people involved in my dining experience (host/ hostess, chef, bartender, busperson, etc), none of these services overlap, so at most, in a 60-minute meal, 60 minutes of effort has gone into it (and since the bulk of the time, I am sitting at my table with no one talking to me, I assume much less). So $4 should be sufficient to bring everyone up to minimum wage (for my share of their time).

Like I said, I generally tip well (per normal person standards, not I-work-in-a-restaurant standards). I know some people don't tip well, or at all, and I feel bad about that. But I get screwed at work, too; that's just life.

I assume that if the good tippers didn't more than compensate for the bad ones, that no one would be a waiter/ waitress.