I'd like to get rid of tipping too, and I'm inclined to agree with you that service charge included (suitably noticed) is not a terrible intermediate to get there.

However, that said, restaurateurs need to realize that it changes the business model. Their waiters are no longer de facto independent contractors that have aligned incentives. Instead they are regular wage earning employees that need more management attention. It's fairly easy to see the impact if you go to a restaurant with a service included threshold (e.g. party of six) and try it both ways.

If you expect a mandatory fee and its not on the item's price, then its dishonest. Sales tax in the US is bad enough, but at least we all know about it and its the government. If they want to break out the "labor" cost on the menu like auto folks do, then fine, but this fee crap is just plain irritating.

It's dishonest, but in my eyes it's less dishonest than how tipping works as a socially-mandatory fee. So I welcome it as a path to improvement.

Maybe some day we'll get it and sales tax to be part of the list price. But that will probably take legal force.

I will note that a service charge on the menu is actually pretty common in a lot of places in Europe. Not saying it’s good or bad but it’s not something a few places in the US have dreamed up.

Most engineers in the bay area don't tip anymore.

I'm sure this has done wonders for the degree of warm feelings the SF service-sector has had in the past for techies...I'd just tell everyone I worked as a landscaper.

Why would you care? Waiters don't expect tipping as much as in the rest of the country.

Hopefully, that'd be because the majority of restaurants are including a service charge with every meal, and not because the waiters have become inured to their techie clientele being chiselling niggardly prats. In circles I move in, being a bad tipper is right up there with shoplifting, dog-kicking or vandalism as a moral failing, and how one treats service employees a touchstone of one's character.

You should change friends. People shouldn't decide what you do with your money.

Well, you can rage against it. You'll be joined by all the people who never want tipping to end because they're intoxicated by the feeling of power they hold over waitstaff as they decide how much to tip.

Oh give me a break. If you need to charge the money, then you need to be like every other business and charge the money. In fact, they are charging the money, they are just throwing it on at the end as a fee. Businesses who do that are dishonest.

I know a large group of people who have stopped tipping in SF. I'm the same. 0$ tip if it's not included.