Even if you could declare your tip up front, you're not incentivizing them to perform better, you're competing with other patrons. You're paying them to neglect others.

It's not that I don't want the ability to incentivize… It's that I want only the owner/manager to have the ability to incentivize, not other patrons.

So you're pretty much stuck with going repeatedly or relying on anecdotal suggestions by friends or locals. And maybe you still can't trust those, for the same reasons.

My point is that I'd rather the menu just said $10 for a burger. I would give them $10, they would give me a burger, and we'd both be happy.

> Food tampering is illegal in the entire United States. In some states, food tampering is a Class I Felony. So your hyperbole is far from reality.

Yes, that was a hyperbole, you got me. The point for that one was that even when servers give awful service, you're still expected to tip them because that's how they get their money. That basically defeats the whole rhetoric of "tipping incentivizes good performance".

I'd love for that to be true :)

So, it's a fine goal. Does that mean we scrap the goal because of one problem?

People cheat welfare, social security, medicare, take-a-penny/leave-a-penny bins, lost and found departments, disability insurance and every other part of life. Some people will cheat the tip system. Inevitable.

Unless you advocate getting rid of welfare, social security, medicare and - frankly - everything... Why are you holding tipping up to such scrutiny?

I agree with your first statement. Pay for performance is a fine goal to strive for and we shouldn't throw the baby away with the bathwater because of a minority of cheaters.

Of course not. But it doesn't mean being complacent and living with a bad solution. There are so many better ways to provide pay for performance. For example: one could change the protocol so that instead of a baseline of zero service charge, the baseline is, say, 15%. This is part of the bill. But then you are free to add more for exceptionally good service or subtract for exceptionally bad service. Fewer people will stiff waiters if they have to be proactive in order to do so.

BTW (and this is a rhetorical question): why should pay-for-performance be limited to waiters? Why not extend it to the cooks as well? Why not let people just pay what they thought the meal was worth? Why not extend it to other professions? Pay your doctor, your lawyer, any service provider, what you thought the service was worth after it has been provided?

No, but we could, instead of the tipping culture, just handle it like every other area of economic endeavor: customer willingness to pay the business is driven by the business's performance in meeting the customer's needs, and the business's willingness to pay the employee is driven by the employee's performance in meeting the customer's needs.

There's no need of a special case solution for restaurant waitstaff when there is already a general solution to acheiving the goal that does not have the problems at issue.

If you honestly tip to reward good performance, why are you rewarding horrible performance at nearly the rate that you reward excellent performance?

Which is fine, I'd never not tip in Canada or the US either, but let's be honest with ourselves - everyone tips because you're culturally expected to tip.

I have a friend here in Seattle, who likes to consider himself a generous tipper. As such a 20% tip is for truly horrible service. 25-30 is standard and 50% is common enough for good service. I do think this good for the servers - but they have no clue that they sucked (I imagine) when they get a 20% tip. Unless I stiff them on my ½ of the bill :)

And while he may be extreme, diversity in the minimum/maximum range for tips means the messaging about performance is muddled.