Who's the cheap one in this equation?

.... the customer who is paying the owner of the restaurant for the food AND is obligated by social convention to pay extra to the waiter who is underpaid.

or

... the restaurant owner who doesn't mind living in a world where we have normalized underpaying restaurant workers to the point where we pass down that responsibility to the customer who is already paying for the food.

Pay your workers a proper wage and get rid of the idea of tipping.

Replace waiter with "CEO" and you begin to understand why socialists believe what they do

Tipping is bullshit. Restaurants should pay their workers properly. But I’m not gonna punish the server for that. She has zero control over that.

If I can’t afford to tip then I just don’t go to the restaurant. People would prefer to make up excuses for why they don’t wanna tip and how that doesn’t make them an asshole while taking huge huffs of their own farts. If you don’t like the tipping culture just go to a fast food restaurant or make your own food. Why is everybody such whiney bitches about everything?

Fully agree with this but the problem is that restaurant owners pay their staff shit

Give proper wages to servers and the tipping can be history

No, it's because their manager who manages the business(hypothetically) isn't paying them.

Makes me glad I live in a state that got rid of the tipped minimun and just has one across the board minimum wage.

I also don't tip

Because I don't go to restaurants with servers

I vote with my wallet that the whole concept is stupid, I hate paying 20% for someone to be fake nice and move food 10 feet

I don't tip as well. But I live in a civilised country where everyone gets at least a tolerable minimum wage. No one is paying me extra money just for doing my job. So I won't either. If they want more, they need to talk to their employer. It's not my responsibility.

Would I live in the United States of Idiots though, where a severe lack of ethical economic behaviour is observable, I indeed would tip the waiters, as that's sadly their financial lifeline.

Just like groceries don't include tax in the advertised price. the system is designed to screw us over.

I believe I'm a somewhat generous tipper.

Just today I rounded up a 23 up to 25. Euros that is. And I'm in Finland.

This is considered a generous tip, most don't tip at all.

When I drove a taxi basically if I had a shift on Christmas eve, then I'd get tips. Otherwise it was like at most 3-5% of riders who gave tips. And this was back in oughts, when people actually used cash. (I literally never had someone tip me on a card when driving a taxi.)

They missed a step. "Waiter is paid below the already sad minimum wage because tips are somehow factored into their paycheck. "

Also don't forget the folks working in the back of the house. Tip if you're able, despite our shitty system.

Here in Europe, waiters actually get a living wage, and still we're expected to tip??? Like yo fuck that! I never go to regular restaurants unless it's with a work colleague that refuses to go to the canteen. Oh my sweet canteen, so cheap yet plentiful, satisfying my stomach, mind and wallet, a true blessing.

Reminds me of that episode of Scrubs, where Dr Cox was going around with a tip jar, because if a guy pouring coffee gets a tip, he should get one from the people whose lives he saved.

Waiter deals with the general public. They deserve it

I'd rather eat a frozen pizza and drink beer in the basement for 1/6th the price.

Except the food cost is only a small part of what we are paying for at a restaurant. What we are paying for is the worker's time and skills. We could, mostly, eat the same ingredients at home for much cheaper.

A lot of the other costs are small and make profit in scale.