I know this is commonly tread ground but l am getting so sick of tipping in the US and hope it doesn’t persist much longer. Though l know it will because the corporate elite probably get off daily to the idea that the customer is paying for their product AND their labor. The fact that Americans accept this system is ludicrous to me. You’re essentially subsidizing billion dollar corporations out of your own damn pocket. And in my experience with serving for years at a decently pricy steakhouse, your average is anywhere from $12-$15 an hour. Then the restaurants have the audacity to send you home if the labor is too high and it’s too slow? They shell out $2 an hour to keep you there? That’s barely $12 for a 6 hour shift! You’re raking them in easily 1000% more that it costs to keep you there. Servers are treated as disposable. They aren’t paid for shit. They are expected to be ridiculed from both the customer and the management. They are probably the lowest earnings to value worker in existence. They earn their corporate overlords millions of dollars a year, only to take home a few thousand for themselves. Of the CUSTOMERS MONEY. Corporate greed really outdid itself with the institution of tipping. It’s about as close to slavery as you can legally get (outside of our prison system, of course). Probably because that’s where it originated from. It’s mind boggling to me that restaurants can’t just fork over a living wage to their employees without putting that bill on their patrons as well. I wish every server could walk out of every restaurant at the same time to illustrate their true value to the restaurant industry.