with tipping, it is simultaneously vaguely some "meritocratic" dimension to the waiter's job, but then it's also basically just a tax, but then it's also a social ritual in which people can boast or be shamed for their ignorance or largesse. I don't like it at all.
All things the same, when some quirk is so inconsequential that people ask why you're up in arms about it, I side with removing the quirk rather than keeping it.
[0] I'd also say this is putting it mildly, almost like a euphemism. It is a way of exploitation that happens to benefit a visible minority of waiters so that the overall impression for those not in the know is one of neutrality. It is definitely a pro-employer law, that dukes the clients against the employees.
I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure that social "rituals" are really inherently something to be worn down just because many of us find them hard to navigate.
Social rituals are a side effect of existing in a society with other people and so they never really go away, they just change into other things. As such it's not really a good idea to solve the problem of such rituals by trying to eradicate them, when what we really should be doing is getting better at living in a world with social rituals that pop up and go away. Plasticity should be the goal, and while streamlining rituals can certainly work with that goal, streamlining should not be the goal itself.
A thousand times this! I've had a lot of personal trouble with the long and drawn out experience of learning that the right answer to "How are you?" is to _lie_ and just say "Good, and you?", regardless of how I really feel.
Which is exactly the goal. It's not about paying less money, it's about eliminating a confusing, unnecessarily-complicated system. If it were just restaurants it wouldn't be too bad, but I'm still not clear exactly how much/when to tip other service workers (hotel cleaners, cab drivers, whatever). People shouldn't have to do a bunch of research[0] to try to figure this stuff out.
And I grew up in the US. I have friends in NYC who moved here fairly recently, and of course it's much more confusing for them. We should ensure every worker is getting paid decently, and have tips be a truly optional thing for exceptional service, which I think was the original intention.
[0] - http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/04/everything-dont-know-tipping.h...
Additionally, there is a weird social/emotional aspect to it. I don't want to be "that guy" by accidentally leaving a shitty tip. When I vacation in by place like Germany where tips aren't as much of a thing, I still wind up leaving a larger than normal tip, to the point that a waiter once followed me out of a restaurant to tell me it was too much, because I just feel weird about it. I don't like the societal pressure of it all.
I always tip 20-25%; my anger isn't that servers need to be paid, it's that they're not allowed to depend on it.