> As much as I'd like to go to a system with fully-paid servers and optional tipping, I have to admit that if I saw 20% higher prices on the menus, I'd be put off unless I made a point to remember, oh yeah, I'm saving on the tip.

Only bringing this up because no other server/former server has yet:

In the states where I've waited tables, servers are taxed on a percentage of their sales, whether they indeed make that amount or not. (Caveat: All of this is how it worked 15 years ago when 10% tipping was standard and 15% was a bonus.) In one state, servers declare both their sales, which obviously can be verified, and their tips -- which clearly can't be -- for each shift at the end of the week. The restaurant similarly reports its sales. If, at the end of the year, the total of the tips declared by all the servers in the restaurant does not equal at least 8% of the total of the restaurant's sales, the difference is split up and allocated to the servers whose declared tips are less than 8% of their sales. This is one reason I sometimes leave a very good tip in cash, even when I pay by debit card; the sale is traceable, the tip must be presumed.

So basically, a server pays tax on at least 8% of his or her sales, whether they actually receive 8% or not. At that time, the 8% figure came from a presumed 10% tip, minus the 1% the server tips out to each of the bus staff and the bar staff. This payout of 2% of a server's sales is usually made mandatory by the restaurant, again, whether the server received a full 10% tip or not. Anything less than a 10% tip, therefore, is a more serious snub than it seems: it actually costs the server money. I'd be curious to know how these numbers and the taxing of tips has changed in the past 15 years.

All of that is not to say it's a good or bad system. Whether an incentive system like tipping works is clearly questionable. Add to this the fact that people are weird about their money and how they spend it, and it's all entirely unreliable. The one constant I learned when serving is that you just never can tell how any given party is going to tip. You can generalize that women usually tip less, then but then you'll probably run across one like me who used to serve and rarely tips less than 15%, even for the worst service. Or, you could run across the woman on her own with four kids, who has them share two refillable sodas but tips you 30%. You just plain never know. And you usually don't find out until after they're gone.