How can service members see the upside of any sales without tips? Bar has a big night and does $20K? Sorry, here is your $20/hr instead of your $500 in tips. Can any bartenders comment?
Because on a slow night, they will still get $20/hr...
I live in Europe and I always thought the tipping system in the USA is a bit backward. Mind you - we DO tip over-here, there's just no unwritten X% rule, and tipping is not mandatory. Service is always included and people are able to live from what they are paid by their employer. I do tip depending on the service (which sometimes means no tipping at all). Also in a lot of places, all tips are collected centrally and then evenly split at the end of a night without intervention from the employer (I worked in pubs as a student).
There's no reason why the customer should bear that burden rather than the owner. The owner can figure out how to implement a profit sharing/incentivization scheme just like every other business! If I work at an Apple store and we sell 5,000 iPhones in a day and still make the same hourly wage, should I be mad at the customers for not tipping?
I think a "profit sharing" system for a restaurant would be pretty complicated. Plus tipping to me is somewhat like a price discrimination system. Cheap skates don't tip or pay the minimum, people that can afford tip more, drunks tip the most. So the same service is being provided at different prices. If you throw that out the window, you might never get those dollars back.
