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Re:Observations from a Tipless Restaurant by po on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @12:20PM (#6128003)
I tip well too but the server doesnt know that. Maybe in non-competitive markets it works, but in a place like NYC where I lived before moving to Tokyo, a table/seat and the servers attention might be in high demand and servers would make judgement calls.

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.

Re:Observations from a Tipless Restaurant by gohrt on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @01:18PM (#6128428)
Perhaps you could choose to not attend a restaurant that provides poor waitservice? Or pay a premium for access to a limited resource?
Re:Observations from a Tipless Restaurant by shabble on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @01:40PM (#6128604)
How do you determine the waitservice quality upfront? You can't trust reviews, since the super positive ones might have all been written by people who 'looked like high-tippers' and got the special service, and likewise the 'apparently poor-tipping party' service reviews might make an otherwise good restaurant look bad.

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.