We all generally tip out of good faith.

As for other jobs that make mistakes and get the same pay, they run the risk of being fired from their jobs completely, as they don’t depend on customers or clients for most of their income, whereas I’ll bet it is not the same in the service industry. If they are a good waiter or waitress but someone doesn’t leave a tip, their boss won’t fire them.

It’s two different thoughts and two different industries. You can’t compare apples to oranges.

Service industries are notorious for being horribly cheap to their employees, whereas if you work in an office as a secretary… or sales person.. not so much. It’s a different ballgame with different skills.

I think what you’re really upset about, is the fact that the system here sucks. I think their minimum wage should be an ACTUAL minimum wage and not service minimum wage. And we should just do away with tipping altogether.

Generally speaking, leaving a low tip makes me uncomfortable, so I tend to leave around 15%.

It has to be really awful for me to leave nothing. I am talking godawful, no food, no service, get your own silverware….

It sounds to me like the whole system of tipping and not tipping needs to be overhauled, and they just need to pay their waitstaff minimum wage at least.

They do that in Europe and nobody tips! I think in some areas they even tell you “no tip please”, especially if they know you’re North American.

For my sister things were even worse because she was a waitress at a casino on reservation land and they are not bound by Federal labor laws and many of the non-native workers get paid less than minimum wage. So on a very good day she'd break 5-$600 if some high roller or singer was in town or someone was feeling generous from their winings but on slow days shed get as little as 30-$50 which is not enough to live on at just under $4/hr. A few unlucky bad days in a row one week and you're really scraping by.

You got me thinking… The last time I sort of didnt tip on purpose was maybe 2 years ago, we were waiting for 90 mins and the food never came and we had a performance to go to. When I just wanted to pay and leave the manager comped our whole meal, but I paid for the drinks anyway and then we left. The bill was 0 but I paid for our tea, I'm not sure if thats a tip or not.

It was a mandatory 18%? Well.. that is pretty darn high, but it’s one of those “can be argued both ways” sort of deal.

If it’s “mandatory” for a big group, then I almost want to say it’s not illegal. But if the service was crap.. well..

I actually think in that particular town, they MAY have a strange, antiquated law that says not tipping is illegal! I feel like I’ve heard of Bethlehem, PA before in a book of Weird But Legal Laws.

What a lucky man!