Everyone wants to change the world, but how many people will actually pick up a stray piece of trash and throw it in a bin?
In many/most states, the minimum wage for a variety of jobs is not in the range of "livable". For example, minimum wage for restaurant jobs in Georgia is $2.13/hour [1]. They actually don't "get paid enough for this shit," so their attitude actually matches reality. Tipping is a necessary component of the compensation if we want to continue our practice of letting certain employers have exemptions from labor laws.
EDIT: $2.13/hour is $340.80 per month, if you are given enough hours to make full-time. Taxes etc. come out of that (you will probably see some of that money again when you file your taxes, for all the good it will do then).
(Yes, I know the employer is supposed to top-up the staff to e.g. $7.25/hr. That does not always/usually/ever happen.)
You are correct that paying people more than a pittance changes how they view their jobs.
This might sound like the Union runs an extortion scheme, but interestingly the employers organizations are supportive as it means a lot less regulation and more flexibility. The result of this model is a pretty flat structure in comp: a nice university degree will likely not make you twice the hourly wage of the lowest diner job in the country.
Working class support for unions in the U.S. has been steadily declining for decades and sits around 50% today.
Why shouldn't it?
I'm not saying that we should continue to screw over people who rely on tips as living wage. What I'm saying is that if one wants to have the overwhelmingly warm service Americans expect in restaurants, we need to keep tipping. After all, we've heard anecdotes about service in Europe being poor.
Yes yes, they don't tip in Asia, and service is excellent. Don't forget the social fabric is different there.
When talking about service you have to consider cultural differences too. I'm american, in the country that I studied abroad in the service expectations were different from cashiers than American cashiers and neither are tipped.
I also would prefer to have much less fake friendliness.
From having lived in both the U.S. and Australia, my feeling isn't so much that tipping is the reason why the service is better. I've had excellent service in some places in Australia and lousy service in places in the U.S. My feeling is that the management makes a point of emphasizing customer service more in the U.S. than in other places (even in businesses that don't have tips), and this is true across the board. Increased competition in the U.S. is some of it, and just plain cultural attitude is alot.
Except you do not give any argument for why that is the case, but just hand wavingly claim it. Why exactly wouldn't it work if tips were abolished, all the prices on the menu are raised to match the average income from tips, and salaries raised to make up for tips? I don't see why good service would only be possible with tipping.
I'm gonna hand wave some more: most Americans when they think of good service beyond just being quick on delivery. Good service is about having a friendly conversation and building rapport with another person. It's may be weird for those of us with introverted tendencies, but this is Middle America with big smiling teeth.
Now.. by giving me an immediate incentive (tip) to smile through a bad customer's rudeness (or even harassment--please don't ever hit on people paid to serve you, ever), I'll continue to smile and pour on that syrupy niceness even when I just want to tell a person that they're an asshole and never have to deal with them again.
Personally, I have absolute no problem with tipping, or paying higher prices to pay restaurant workers a better wage, but I think people who are pushing no-tip don't understand the complexities in place.
In the restaurant world, at the end of each night, you'd get a huge wad of cash, and you felt you had worked for it (even though it can be argued people tip consistently). So even though the carrot may not be real, it still convinced people to act a certain way.
Now take away that carrot, take away the cash. You just have better paid McDonald's workers.
Service in any restaurant is more a function of the kinds of employees you can attract (through wages) and the amount of training the manager puts into their staff. Tipping is only important in that it allows some restaurants to pay a fairly decent amount of money to attract higher quality workers for only a couple of nights when a straight wage would require a larger time commitment to get the same amount of money. However, a (necessarily higher) straight wage would also allow more workers the opportunity to make a decent full time living as a waiter or bartender, which means you could have really good servers even on less busy nights of the week, but fewer servers on the busiest nights as there's less flexibility in hiring and firing.
The biggest difference in customer service in all the establishments I've worked in was management. Training is extremely important and can't be winged, there has to be a procedure in place. Having the highest expectations of your employees and component staffing are a must. And don't be scared to fire anyone who is not meeting your standards.
Poor customer service is mostly a result of poor management. Good customer service is a result of good management.
Anyway over friendly servers make me very, very uncomfortable. I went out for food with my companions not for a social experience with a stranger.
Being nice to assholes isn't something I consider necessary for good service. If anything it's bad service for all the other polite customers who have to listen to their bullshit.
I included that point because there are a lot of foreign readers of HN who may not realize how widely flouted our labor laws are here in the US.