To define:

Amateur diner = waits in line for 2 hours to get a club sandwich and water with lemon, maybe a glass of White Zin if they're splurging

Experienced diner = aperitif/cocktail to start, wine with dinner, a couple courses, maybe an after dinner drink

And, quite frankly, I do think (more often than not) someone has to have a cash incentive to do their job properly. It might not be in tip form, but more often in salary form too. You can't tell me that the kid down the street working at McDonald's making his $5.15/hr is getting paid to provide great service. It's tough to motivate someone to want to do their job better when they're getting paid on that level.

The CEO of a company making 300K a year obviously has to provide some tangible benefits to those who provide his employment in order to keep his job and salary level. If the Board of Directors all of a sudden dropped his pay to 25K a year, you're telling me that he's really going to stay motivated to provide his shareholders with profits every quarter? Of course not. If people stopped providing him with the income to which he had become accustomed, he'd bail on that job in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately American society as we know it says that instead of getting a salary, servers get tipped. If everyone all of a sudden said "You know what? Screw it. This tipping thing is dumb," and stopped tipping and management didn't compensate, there would be no servers able to maintain a coherent conversation much less recommend a particular vintage of Insignia over another.

The point I raised earlier is that if everyone wants to vote and say "Hey, tipping is dumb. We're not going to do it anymore," management would in turn add 20% to every item on the menu, and then pay the servers with a check. It'd all work out the same for my bank account. But, I have the feeling everyone would start complaining about how much food now costs in a restaurant. The fact that you actually have the ability to pay that extra mark up in proportion to the level received should be looked upon as a benefit, not a curse. If you got crappy service after they raised the prices, you'd have no recourse but to just pay your bill that night and never return. At least with the current tipping culture you have the ability to decide for yourself.

This opinion is very much a cop-out. Those people all get paid a salary. I get paid nothing to work at the restaurant. I haven't gotten a check from the restaurant I work at in my five years of employment. If I get stiffed all night, I walk home with negative money. If I don't tip a UPS driver, he's still making at least $10/hr (guessing). If I don't tip a doctor or dentist, I think they can still afford their green fees.

I didn't create the system. I just try and educate people on the topic.

Chris