When should you tip a waiter or waitress?

[Renton]

ugh, this got too long for me to not grunch...

Renton, like someone else said, when tipping is in play there is this gross sort of slimey feeling to the whole transaction. Something that should typically be at least decent, human interaction, is turned into this fake performance. Like comparing sex to sex with a prostitute. This is mildly unpleasant for the non-narcissistic customer when it isn't well disguised by the server, but potentially detrimental to the long term psychological health of the server. I literally would turn away from a customer, shed the smile, and think "that was fucking gross" all in one instant.

What is to stop a server from just "being real" and doing a good job without acting like the guy from Chotchkies in Office Space?

So there's that... then there's the stress of inconsistent wages-- which shouldn't be such a problem, but clearly people working these jobs aren't on average very good financial planners.

With risk and inconsistency comes great reward. Serving can be one of the best paying non-skilled / non-educated jobs on the planet, depending on the restaurant of course.

And lastly, I'd like to point out that truly exceptional service rarely sees the server keeping 100% of their tips, or anywhere close to it for that matter. "Tipping out" to positions that generally don't receive direct tips, but assist the server (such as a bus boy, food runner, host, etc) is super standard. Then there are tip pools, which are much more common in fine dining, where phenomenal service is actually a goal and not just a potential bi-product of trying to make as much money as possible.

That's a bit of a rant, but if you'd like, we can get into how check(and therefore tip)-boosting tricks, like "up-selling"

It seems like flagrant "up-selling" is a gambit though. If it is off-putting to the customer, that should theoretically reflect in your tip.

are far worse than not having your water glass filled to the brim constantly, or whatever else it is that you (in general) consider bad service.

...........

[surviva316]

It seems like flagrant "up-selling" is a gambit though. If it is off-putting to the customer, that should theoretically reflect in your tip.

I didn't bother getting into how success in accruing tips has so little to do with alacrity to give free refills because I didn't think it's relevant to this particular topic and because I've gotten into it in other threads, but maybe I'll dig it up.

In the meantime, just trust me that these "in theory" postulations on how different things correlate to success in the service world hold very very little water. You see improvement in your wages by doing a whole slew of things that have nothing to do with satisfying guests.