Having just finished a 13 hour wokday that sent me home with $50 in tips (actually not a bad day for a busser, with the $2.83/hr I get, it works out to over $6.67/hr), and having been a busser at 3 different restaurants (2 of which I made less than the regular minimum wage, to account for tips), I feel qualified to talk about tipping culture. Working for tips is pretty much crap for both the server and the customer. As a server, you bust your ass for the most part, and you still get people ordering what we have lovingly dubbed "The Jewish Martini" (water, 2 lemon wedges, 3 packets of sugar), people trying to get Early Bird Specials an hour after the special ends, and people trying to make substitutions on specials ("Instead of the cauliflower, I'll have the African rock lobster."). I'm all for stretching the dollar as far as it will go, but these are the people who will run you around like a medieval serving wench, then consider 10% a gift. Don't get me started on tip-sharing. In a perfect world, everyone would do everything they could to upsell and give the best possible service. Also, I'd be twenty pounds lighter and nailing
Lindsey Lohan. In the real world, if you are a good server, you end up leaving with, maybe, half of what you actually earned. It's a system that rewards laziness and calls it 'fairness'. As a customer, tipping is crap, because instead of rewarding good service by giving the server a little extra money, you feel obligated to tip and (if you've ever been in food service) tip heavy because, instead of it being a bonus, the server is counting on your tips to pay their bills. The only person who wins is The Boss, who can get away with paying his waitstaff a pittance of less than $3/hour for a very demanding job (if you don't think waiting tables is hard, you need to pull double-shifts on both Friday and Saturday, at a fairly popular restaurant, then get back to me), and never has to really crack the whip, because poor service punishes itself (unless you share tips, that is). That being said, here are my personal rules for tipping:
1) $5 or 20%, whichever is more. Being the type of guy who frequents King's & Denny's, my bill is often less than $10. A generous tip would be about $2, for occupying (as I often do), at least 1-2 hours of this server's time. I think that a tip of at least $5 is well within my budget, but still generous enough that I'm not a complete prick.
2) Recognize things that are not the server's fault. If your steak is overcooked, and you have to wait some time after you send it back before you get another, this is not bad service. This is a bad chef. Tip as you normally would, and leave a small note for the manager explaining how the chef fucked up. If managers get enough of these notes, you will see a lot fewer poor cooks in foodservice.
3) Poor service should not be rewarded. If the service is geuinely bad (you are left waiting for some time before your order is even taken, the server is an asshole, etc), do tip less than you normally would. However, do also either talk to the server or leave them a note explaining why you're upset.
4) Sidetip bussers. We love it. We know where the beer and/or good tables are, we know which specials are genuine, and which are "We either to sell this today or throw it out tomorrow" specials, and we will help you out if you help us out. It is shameless, I know, but I have student loans to think about.
The pity about tipping is that it's *way* to ingrained into our culture. If it really were just a little something extra in exchange for above-average service, the servers would be motivated to try to get that extra few dollars per table, but they wouldn't be so dependent on the tips as to make waiting tables almost not worth the money, and the customers wouldn't feel obligated to tip, simply because of the low hourly wage servers get.