What's becoming a problem is that many businesses that weren't tip-related are suddenly requesting tips for service. Those are the ones that people should not tip. There's no need to expand the number of services that need to be tipped.
Who gets to decide?
I think the only absurd thing is making it a percentage of the cost. Why do I tip someone more for doing the same job because my meal/service is more expensive?
If you've not seen how the back of house functions you may have some misconceptions about the sources of labor involved in your meal.
Least expensive item is a salad at $7. $0.70 tip. Most expensive is $22. $2.20 tip. This is a baffling thing to care about.
I want to know how it works! You’ve told me I’m ignorant and that’s fine, I’m too invested in my current career to get a job in a kitchen right now, and you seem to know, so go ahead and educate.
Who gets my tip and how is it divided? I’ve always assumed it goes entirely to the waitstaff (pooled or not). It seems like maybe it should be distributed to other people who make the service happen. Does the dishwasher get a cut? What about the line cooks?
This is a generalization that isn’t universally true. I’ve known so many restaurants where the servers keep their tips. The whole point of this thread was that the means of application are inconsistent and arbitrary.
For example, when I go to a restaurant serving steaks, the job isn't significantly different from one steak to another, but the cost can be significantly different.
Preparing a ribeye vs. a t-bone vs. a sirloin isn't all that different, but you can expect the prices on each to vary wildly, mostly due to the cost of materials. Rationally, neither the wait staff nor the chef really deserve more of a tip for one vs. the other, but the convention demands it.
Well not if you factor in not having to pay a tip.
> What's becoming a problem is that many businesses that weren't tip-related are suddenly requesting tips for service. Those are the ones that people should not tip.
The problem is that the line between where tipping is required is incredibly difficult for people to understand. It used to be that if they asked you to enter a tip that meant that the employee wasn't getting a living wage unless you gave something. Now you can't use that, and all the "simple" ways that people say you can know are just confusing to most people. The result is that people have to either make a random decision or consistently tip everywhere or nowhere, and everywhere isn't financially possible.
This tipping madness should stop and is IMHO US specific - I don't see that the rest of the world sees tipping as something "by default", and in many countries tipping is even disrespectful.
The customer is already getting higher prices and pressured to tip a percentage regardless of the price