Wondering out loud: Why are tips based on a percentage of your total bill? To expand further, why should a server who provides excellent service to a family of four dining at Vincenzo's reap a more generous reward than a server who provides the same excellent service to a family of four dining at Frisch's? In either case, both servers are providing the same exact service in the same way, and are exerting the same effort. Why does one deserve to get a larger reward than the other? One would think that a specific service (in this instance the act of taking orders, bringing the food, refilling drinks, clearing plates, etc.) would have a fairly consistent value associated with it, regardless of the location it's being performed (in the same city, anyway).
Of course the obvious answer is that no one wants to go out to eat and pay more for their service than for their food. But it still seems odd to me, that two people could be doing the same exact job in two buildings within a couple miles of each other and both could experience such different results. What's worse is that the server at a cheaper restaurant could be doing a consistently better job than a server at a more expensive place and could still easily wind up worse off financially. Doesn't seem fair at all.
I've always found tipping to be a pretty awkward thing anyway. I'd much rather see restaurants pay their servers a fair wage and encourage them to do the best possible job. If I ever ran a restaurant, I'd want to own the process for rewarding my employees for excellent service --- not place that responsibility in the hands of customers. It wouldn't be difficult to figure out who's consistently doing a good job and who isn't, and to pay out accordingly. I think it would be interesting to run a restaurant that tells customers up front that they don't have to worry about tipping because the servers are paid fairly in the first place. If the only way you can get food in my restaurant is by having my servers bring it to you, why should you be expected to pay extra for that? It's not like I'm giving you a choice. You should be able to come in, relax, enjoy your meal and service, and pay a fair price for the food you just ate --- I'll work out how my income is distributed to the people behind the scenes. In a perfect world, no one would ever have to solve a math problem at the end of a good meal.
Finally, why is it that tipping seems to have become confined to just a select few occupations? You get a tip if you carry my food to my table, carry my luggage to my hotel room, or drive me around in a yellow-colored Crown Victoria... but you don't get a tip if you deliver my overnight package, diagnose my condition and prescribe a cure, or fix the downed power line across the street. Why? In all of those examples, people are already being paid to do a specific job; why has society placed the burden of additional payment on certain services?
