It is not uncommon for the night's tips to be shared amongst all of the employees at the restaurant.

I don't enjoy fighting for the bartenders attention with the attractive person on the other end of the bar; tipping is how I level that playing field.

If you're rude to the owner, you're toast. "The customer is always right" does not apply. Maybe you're wrong, and they'll tell you to your face. "White wine? With your steak, sir?" can be absolutely dripping with disdain.

I think it's better that way. They can be more honest and not have to pretend they actually like you. The way they treat customers they don't know might border on hostile, but they will go to great lengths to accommodate their regulars.

Too lazy to read? Watch this 20 min TEDx talk which was linked to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOk2C4n4eMQ

In a tipout system, what started as one enterprise (a restaurant selling its food & hospitality to its guests), has now spawned two completely new, concurrent businesses: the business of the server selling the perception of extra attention to the guest for tips; and the business of the kitchen workers selling favors to the servers for tipout. These additional, parasitic businesses are not focused on improving the quality of the original enterprise. Instead, these secondary businesses are focused on maximizing income using short term, and proven effective, means. ...

Over the last couple years, another alternative has started to emerge — the lawful tip pool. In this model, the business is permitted by the law of the land to distribute its tips among every member of its team, including kitchen workers. In the Ninth District (the western US), one court decision (Cumbie v. Woody Woo) has paved the way for this, but the US Department of Labor has attempted to nullify that decision by issuing new regulations. It’s not clear that the Labor department is actually allowed to trump the court, and the matter is not yet clearly resolved.

Back in 2006, however, it was still definitely illegal for a tip pool to include back-of-house workers. The only legal way that tip revenue could be distributed among the whole team was for it to not be tip revenue. Instead, it had to be an amount charged by the business for its service. In other words, a service charge.

Disclosures:

I worked in the service industry for years while also holding an engineering internship and getting a EE degree. There were many people who were not my regulars that made me feel special on days where there wasn't much else to.

Buying a phone number? This seems weird.