When things don't make sense you DON'T need to participate in them.
An under-appreciated aspect of tipping is that it is a form of wage elasticity in industries with small margins and highly variable revenue. Hedging revenue risk is going to come out of employee paychecks, and tipping allows the employee to take on some of that risk for higher average take-home pay. Eliminating tipping has been tried in bars and restaurants many times in the US with poor results, such that they revert; employees hate it because they would rather have the income variability and higher average income, and it also impacts the quality of their hours.
There are some complex economics going on with tipping that it would be foolish to ignore.
Why does someone need to survive on tips? Why can’t it be part of their base pay?
What I hate about US tipping is that tips are a 15% hidden tax. It’s expected out of you even though the service is terrible. People get legit mad if they don’t get their minimum 15% tip.
Adding tips to base pay necessarily lowers aggregate income for employees in return for less income variability -- it is a tradeoff. Many people who receive tips are not "surviving" on them, their base pay is more in line with median western European incomes, so many American employees can afford income variability in exchange for higher average earnings, and people that cannot afford income variability select industries without it. In practice, this is their preference and it has been tested in the market many times. Every time tipping has been eliminated in the US in a business neutral way, the employees revolt because it reduces their effective total compensation.
Employees have all the power. Tipping being preferred in the US is almost certainly an artifact of the US having higher incomes than most other countries, a much larger percentage of the working class can afford income variability which creates an employment market for people with this preference. The median American has $1000/month left over after all ordinary expenses, which is more than enough to float some income variability if it means they can earn more.
I only hope that states can agree on legislature that _ensures_ that they can at least make a livable wage from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage
This is just anecdotal, but I know of a restaurant that pays their workers the $2.13/hr minimum for Tennessee, and they assuredly do not reach TN's $7.25/hr minimum wage with tips.
This place can only get away with it because there's a steady supply of college students throughout the year who are desperate for any job that comes their way; the high turnover rate doesn't hurt them in the least.
Tipping not only produces different outcomes for employees but it also impacts employers and customers. Even if you raise prices 15% it still won't be enough for most restaurants to keep their entire floor staff. Restaurants will be forced to cut hours and/or staff - this will lead to worse service and more unhappy customers.
And this has been my experience when visiting countries that don't have tipping (primarily the UK). Most of the restaurants are understaffed - there would be a single server covering 10+ tables. And because of that the service was really slow. And slow service is not only frustrating for customers but it is also bad for restaurants (fewer customers = less items sold).
I always get the feeling that the people who hate tipping the most have never actually worked in an actual restaurant.
The intellectual backflips people perform to justify this abhorrent, classist performative display of daily piety are a sight to behold.