That said, travelling to the US shouldn't be handicapped by a fear of tipping. Don't tip, or do, but not going because of it is an unfortunate choice.
However, tipping only exists in certain jobs, and apparently people who do other jobs do them just fine in the US. So tipping doesn't seem to be necessary.
By the way, I also think the tipping issue is a significant annoyance when going to the US. I love visiting the US and definitely it's not a reason for not going (and I don't think the GP meant that either), but probably my most uncomfortable moments there (excluding when I was detained at customs, I think due to having the same name as a criminal) have been when I got disapproving or even downright angry looks for (unintentionally) not giving the expected tip due to not knowing all the details of customs by state, restaurant type, etc.
edit: I was thinking about how to award good employees and I think it's simple: give a small paper form at the end, where people will provide ratings for the service provided. Not all of them will fill them, of course, but I think you will get some feedback about who are your best employees and who are the worst. Also, regarding tips, how do they help the kitchen staff (in the restaurants, you can find other examples on other businesses)? That sistem isn't fair.
The employer is in a much better position to assess staff performance than customers... And it's not the customers job.
If a waiter sucks they won't fire themselves just because they're only getting 15% tips.
I disagree, after all it's the waiter who interacts with the customer most, while the employer mostly can only watch from afar or has other (better) things to do.
In that regard a 5% difference on the tip won't do much at all. If the waiter expects to get tipped anyway, regardless of how bad the service was, then he's far more likely to give bad service and just get 5% less tip.
But if getting any tip at all depends on the quality of service, then waiters at least have to try to deliver some decent service, instead of just doing an half-arsed job and getting their "guaranteed", although somewhat smaller, tip.
At any rate, I've not heard of tips being collated by the manager, and the employees with the smallest tips fired/disciplined... but perhaps it does happen? Unless that's the case IMO customers aren't assessing performance in a meaningful way.
> But if getting any tip at all depends on the quality of service
In the US it does not, service has to be DIRE to get 0.
The manager, for example, can observe if the employee is the problem or the customer. I've observed customers (from the outside) fly off the handle for no reason whatsoever. An employee shouldn't be paid less because the person they are serving is awful. They also shouldn't be paid less because the back of the house is short staffed so the food took an hour to be cooked, because people will tip less for that reason.
Also there's the people who believe "good service" means being served by a young attractive woman who smiles at you.
I'd like to know what good service means to other people. Good service to me is you take my order and bring me what I ordered.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296301...
While tipping is not an enormous driver of service quality (primarily for the reason you mentioned—that tips are expected even when service is poor), it does appear to be correlated with better service to some degree.
Not in my experience. For instance, I've seen cab drivers expecting a 20% tip to be added by default regardless of the quality of service, courtesy and help (if any). It feels terrible to be asked to pay 120% (in total) for mediocre or even lousy service.
I've tipped extra on those occasions where the service has been exceptional and above the call of duty. But I don't like to feel pressured to tip when someone is just "phoning it in".
The entire point of being a server is to offer the customer a pleasant dining experience.. that is literally the major job qualification in customer service. Are you saying that people that work in retail aren't incentivized to do their job because they don't receive tips. I think its absurd, because if you ever work retail, you take much more crap from customers on top of working just as hard.
The USA is very much about what's in it for me? One has to be paid extra, explicitly (apparently), to do one's job well, paid to give good service, paid to be nice (?).
Is it necessary to have a direct tip for doing those things? In a different culture, those are things your salary pays for.
While this is true, it also sounds as an excuse not to improve. It is clearly time for the culture of United States to change, and not just change, but strive to change for the better. Punting won't do that.
There is too much punting going on everywhere, which is one of the reasons the world now finds itself in the problems it finds itself in. Please help stop the vicious downward spiral. Not punting on problems is a low hanging fruit.