The point was that it is a hugely different job to a cashier in a shop. Those interactions/transactions are usually pretty short. When you go out to eat you may be looked after for 2+ hours. From start to finish. Haven’t you ever had your eating out experience ruined by shite service? I know I have. Or had it made so much better by really good service? I certainly have.
Waiting/bar/hotel staff etc. are expected to, and often do, go above and beyond*, whether you want, need or get that from them or not is neither here nor there.
*above and beyond the bare minimum of taking orders, bringing food/drinks, taking payment.
You want to eat your food and be left alone? Competent waiting staff know which customers want to be left alone to eat in peace and leave. They step it up or hold back, they react to each new interaction as it happens. There is, although some are unwilling to believe it, more to the job than simply taking and clearing away orders, sometimes for very large parties (and getting them right the vast vast majority of the time, or efficiently sorting out mistakes if they do happen), then bringing the bill.
When I first started in a restaurant having had no experience, I watched other experienced staff rake it in. I wondered how I could improve to make decent tips like they did. It made me improve very quickly. Tips are a great incentive. No doubt there should be workplace bonuses for lowly waiting staff but it’s management who get bonuses.
There were people who came into my old place of work who got reputations for being tight-fisted. We never went out of our way for those people, they got consistently very good basic service (because of the nature of the establishment) but nothing more. Same in the pub I moved onto. I think people who don’t tip are a bit tight, but I still respect their decision not to.
It is horrible though when you're out with a group and one stingy effer refuses to contribute to the tip. It sours the experience.
The worst ones are when everyone from the table contributes cash + tip for their portion of the bill, ONE person puts the entire bill on their card (sans tip if no service charge) & pockets the cash including tip. So the cheap bastard has taken everyone else's tip contribution & the rest of the party are none the wiser! I've seen that happen quite a lot over the years. Even if you disagree with the practice of tipping, you'd have to agree that that's a really shitty thing to do.
Since working in hospitality, I am more discerning and have higher expectations of service, and I am less inclined to tip when the service isn’t up to standard. For eg. if someone fucked up my order but dealt with it well and sorted everything out, I’d still tip. If someone was efficient but treated me like an inconvenience, I wouldn’t tip. I don’t believe in tipping no matter what, and I would take issue with automatic service charges applied to all bills, unless the service was consistently v.good or I was part of a large party. Where I worked we stated VERY clearly on the menu ‘10% service charge applied to tables of 8 or more’. At xmas this was applied to 6 or more. Again, made very clear on the menu and at the time of booking.
Whether you agree or disagree with the custom of tipping, the fact remains that it is part of restaurant culture here. Your choice to not partake. No big deal.
I think the major reason for the OP pile-on is because she came on MN to bitch about it and ended up being really knobby about the server.