While that's a good quote, it's not quite relevant for people such as waiters. In my experience, being polite and tipping generously regularly gets me a speedier and more pleasant service. Sometimes it won't make a difference, sometimes it will make even more of a difference, such as a free drink or two, but more often than not it does have a positive impact on the service you receive.

That's true not just with waiters, but in many service situations - for example, in Oxford (a fairly small city with fairly low numbers of taxis required) a lot of the drivers know me, and when I call for a ride it takes a taxi, in my experience, roughly half the average time to arrive, simply because the drivers on duty know that I will be a pleasant customer and a good tipper.

Getting better service shouldn't be a neccesary reason to treat people well, but it's certainly a nice bonus.

In fact, that's why I was careful to call it a variant; my sentiments are the same as yours. I'm actually happy that you've articulated the distinction.

..and the brilliantly insightful but ironic quote:

I don’t hire people who have to be told to be nice. I hire nice people.--Leona Helmsley

Trying to dig up the source for this quote leads to quite an array of people it's been attributed to! So far I've turned up variants sourced to: Abigail van Buren (the old name of "Dear Abby"), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a Reader's Digest letter-writer named James D. Miles, and Malcolm S. Forbes. Most of the attributions are questionable, though (e.g. I haven't found anybody actually pointing to where in Goethe's works such a quote can be found).

In case you were curious of a source, this link cites Ann Landers as the author.

http://quotationsbook.com/quote/40407