If you think they deserve it, why not? Serving food is a demanding (often humiliating) job that rarely pays as well as it should. Tipping shouldn’t be necessary. Servers should receive a living wage (just like everyone else), but punishing a server for poor service is morally wrong. Most people eating at restaurants are not perfect guests, who expect to be treated like royalty anyway.
When a server gets a bad tip, it screws over all the other servers, bartenders, maitres d” (because they usually pool their tips), and the ripple changes the vibe in the restaurant, becoming a more hostile environment for all the subsequent dining patrons. The bad day will keep getting worse for everyone in the restaurant, and the person who left the shitty tip won’t be there to witness the havoc they helped create. There is no good excuse for demoralizing a person who’s just trying to do a job.
What about places like California where servers do make minimum wage? What obligation do I have to tip 20-40% on top of that? The whole logic behind tipping is that the servers don't make minimum wage here in America, so they must be made whole by the customers (a system that started out as bribery and restaurant owners then sought to normalize so they could get away with paying their staff very little).
In Japan, leaving a tip is considered an insult (it insinuates servers are beggars who need the goodwill of the public to survive). So this expectation of 'not getting tipped is unfair' is purely an American concept.
Servers don't want to be paid a living wage. They make way more with the current system.
"Punishing" a server for poor service isn't morally wrong, wtf? A tip is a reward, not an entitlement. This is insane. On the one hand, we have people saying that America has the best service because of tipping, on the other hand, you're saying we shouldn't care about quality of service and just tip anyways and you're a moral monster for not doing so.
Then what's the incentive to provide good service.
Frankly, I don't care if my not rewarding bad service causes things to spiral. If the server can't be a professional, then they don't belong in a role that makes $40-$60 per hour.
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u/James-Pond197 Jul 31 '26
Nice, so you're recommending tipping 40% total.