> and I often leave a small tip on top of that because I'm entirely not sure whether waiters see any money from that "service".

Isn't this a crazy sentiment though? It's like we've all been trained to pity waiters and unless we're handing them money directly we're worried they might go home empty handed. How did we get to this point?

Yeah it is a crazy sentiment.

If we weren't crazy on this part we would refuse paying anything not on the bill. Like we do in grocery store.

FYI: The "just add it to the item price" was covered in Part 4. Its linked at the bottom of the article, or here it is directly: http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...

To your point - yes, adding on an extra 18% doesn't make much sense when they could have simply incorporated that into their menu prices. You will never be certain how the money is divvied up, regardless of whether you are paying additional tips or not...

That being said, patrons are accustomed to paying an additional fee when dining out; so rather than simply raise prices (which I'm sure would elicit grumbling and/or loss of patronage), they maintained the expectation of paying an additional amount for the service they've received.

Yes they can do that without much resistance from their customers, but imagine some other business* smuggling hidden fees into your bill - you will feel offended and cheated. This marks restaurants as an unusual business.

* I was going to call telcos an example, but then I don't know whether they don't already do that in the US. Or indeed anywhere. Which is a bit scary if you ask me.

P. S. Why were those persons angry? Maybe you didn't make it clear that you collect fixed "service" fees? You should write it somewhere in the menu, or else it's a rip off.

On the contrary, in some states a “service charge” has to be shared among the employees. By separating the charge they are relinquishing the possibility of doing anything else.

You struggle to understand that the margins in food service are amazingly thin?