Pretty good Downtown Grand offer

The tippinc culture is just delaying one thing: The collaps.  If I go to a Starbucks Café in the morning and pay something around 6.50-7.50 for my caramello latte, why should I through 1-2 dollars into the tip box because the Starbucks Company decided to pay lousy wages to the "baristas" or whatever they call them? McDonald's doesn't have such tip boxes, but Starbucks has it. Why is that? Can you justify why a McDonalds worker deserves less tips than a Starbucks barista? Sorry, but it's a joke what's going on here.

Sorry, but am I missing something here? 7.50 for a cup of coffee to me already seems to be a high price for something that's not even worth 1 dollar in production. I could give you endless examples why I don't like the system. But I still pay my tips because I know it's part of your (questionable) culture.  When I go to a steak house and the bottle of wine adds about 40 per cent of the total tab, can you explain to me why I must pay 20 per cent of the price of the wine as tip because it's your "tradition". The opening work time of an expensive or cheap wine bottle is about the same, but the tipping cost is higher. Makes no sense to me. It makes sense to America, but not to the rest of the world. Sorry. 

You do you, Boris.  You decide whether you want to tip or not.  It is well within your rights as an individual to make the decision based on your income, your beliefs and whether or not you feel the service you were provided, warrants a tip.  My mom, who is German, born and raised in the Rhineland, has the same attitude that you have.  She is very hesitant at times to tip, especially if the product or service that was provided wasn't very good.  It's her right and her money.     Be well. 

You should consider reading the book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

It was written by someone who worked with the CIA. 

a) The tipping system/culture isn't a "failure"; in order to call it that, you would have to ask, what is its objective and how has it "failed" to achieve that? Well, to the extent that any person or group of people created the tipping system (and I doubt that there is any such person or group), the objective was to be able to employ servers at low wages, which increases the profitability of restaurants (and casinos, etc.). Did that "fail"? No, absolutely not. Rightly or wrongly, millions of people make the majority of their income from tips.

b) Of course, the system would be more efficient if there was no tipping, and employees were paid a fair wage. But you have to realize that if someone tried to, say, open a restaurant where tipping was discouraged, they'd have to have higher menu prices in order to be able to pay those higher wages, and they would be at a competitive disadvantage. People would say, hmm, pay $10 for a burger and tip $2, or just pay $12 for a burger and not tip? They'd tend to choose the former option, because they'd have more control over the cost of their dining/service. And yes, that's an American thing, and yes yes yes, we're a horrible gang of overly independent, self-centered morons. I don't disagree. But it is the way it is, and it would take a seismic shift to "fix" it.

c) That evil orange fucktard isn't "my" President; in fact, he ain't nobody's President except himself.

d) Only a moron, dipshit American or noble European, runs up massive credit card debt. Spending money you don't have is a fundamental mistake UNLESS whatever you spend it on produces a financial return that justifies the interest cost. The US government borrows heavily, but manages that because it pays very low interest on its debt. American consumers, not so much. And not everyone who runs up debt does so because they have an unhealthy appetite for luxuries and fripperies. Sometimes, the car's transmission goes out at the exact same time the kids need new school supplies. We're not a nation of spendthrifts and wastrels, and Europe isn't an oasis of financial prudence and nobility.

e) I do in fact think that the European way of life is superior to ours in many ways; universal health care, porous borders, fundamental human rights (actually observed), cultural melding, etc. etc. But you guys spent twenty-five centuries burning down each other's cities and slaughtering whoever happened to be next door at the moment. You got the lessons shoved down your throat until you gagged. We, on the other hand, inherited a resource-rich and largely empty land where the "rugged individual" ethos could thrive. We're different from you because we were created in a different environment. And I must note, most of our ancestors are people who ran screaming from Europe. So ain't nobody entitled to feel superior.

I really love how unsophisticated people call the culture of others "questionable" because they don't understand its context, its origins, or its history. God knows, having visited Europe a total of eleven times and having spent perhaps a year total there, I've run across hundreds of "why the fuck do they do that/why the fuck do they do that that way" instances. And almost always, there's a perfectly good/understandable reason. But often, you have to really delve deep into the culture and history to see why things are done in a certain way.

The way things are done in Europe is the product of millenia of Kookoobird the Fourteenth deciding to try to devour his next door neighbor, and that happening every six months, often in multiple locales. Endless waves of slaughter rolling back and forth across the continent...culminating in the deaths of ninety million people during the Great European Rock Fights, Parts One and Two. So a peaceable, passive, human rights oriented, semi-socialist landscape? Sure, of course, or your continent would be nothing but one immense, scorched graveyard.

In your semi-rhetorical question above, the fallacy is "must." You don't HAVE to pay any tip at all. And you know what? If you say that, well, one-fifth of the cost of a restaurant meal is the cost of service, then if you pay that up front (no tipping), then you're not being allowed to decide if the service you received warranted that charge. With tipping, you can decide whether the service was subpar (10%), satisfactory (20%), excellent (30%), ghastly (1%), or anything else. I think customers like to have that agency.

I wouldn't label American tipping customs as a "tradition," because there's no compulsion to follow it and very little stigma attached to not doing so. You don't want to tip, you don't. There have been times when I haven't, and y'know what, when I got terrible service, I would not have liked to be paying the same price for that service no matter what. It's, you know, FREEDOM! William Wallace died so that we could tip however much we wanted.

I really love how unsophisticated people call the culture of others "questionable" because they don't understand its context, its origins, or its history. God knows, having visited Europe a total of eleven times and having spent perhaps a year total there, I've run across hundreds of "why the fuck do they do that/why the fuck do they do that that way" instances. And almost always, there's a perfectly good/understandable reason. But often, you have to really delve deep into the culture and history to see why things are done in a certain way.

The way things are done in Europe is the product of millenia of Kookoobird the Fourteenth deciding to try to devour his next door neighbor, and that happening every six months, often in multiple locales. Endless waves of slaughter rolling back and forth across the continent...culminating in the deaths of ninety million people during the Great European Rock Fights, Parts One and Two. So a peaceable, passive, human rights oriented, semi-socialist landscape? Sure, of course, or your continent would be nothing but one immense, scorched graveyard.

In your semi-rhetorical question above, the fallacy is "must." You don't HAVE to pay any tip at all. And you know what? If you say that, well, one-fifth of the cost of a restaurant meal is the cost of service, then if you pay that up front (no tipping), then you're not being allowed to decide if the service you received warranted that charge. With tipping, you can decide whether the service was subpar (10%), satisfactory (20%), excellent (30%), ghastly (1%), or anything else. I think customers like to have that agency.

I wouldn't label American tipping customs as a "tradition," because there's no compulsion to follow it and very little stigma attached to not doing so. You don't want to tip, you don't. There have been times when I haven't, and y'know what, when I got terrible service, I would not have liked to be paying the same price for that service no matter what. It's, you know, FREEDOM! William Wallace died so that we could tip however much we wanted.

Another aspect of tipping "culture" is that servers used to be almost exclusively female, and they're still the majority, so paying them adequately has always been on the back burner, so to speak. Tipping is a way of redressing the imbalance. In Europe, the solution might be to force/persuade employers to pay a living wage. That's the way it is in Oregon, Washington, and California (so Boris's blanket statements about the US aren't valid). In AMURRICA, the solution might be a societal pressure to tip.

Kevin, I love to read your comments. My English isn^t sufficient to understand all the expressions you used, but something is telling me that you are trying to show me how smart you are and how much you know. And please to not try to convince me (which will never work out) about what is the right way or the wrong way, let me just tell you that I don't care how much you tip. You can tip 50% in the steak house if you like. Or 150 per cent. The more, the better actually.

Hopefully you calculate that from the grand total , the final number. Because then you also tip the tax amount being added (what a lot of people probably do). I go by the rules, but it's my legitimate right to think whatever I want. Explain how come a Starbucks barista has the tip box at the cashier, but Mc Donald's staff doesn't have the chance to increase his hourly wage a bit`? 

 Is it that a barista is doing a much better job than a McDonald's worker? Or what about an cashier at the Albertson's? Why is there no tip box at the check-out? These people are sometimes even friendlier than the Starbucks barista. Give me a break, man. It's time to rethink that system. I repeat: It's a complete failure! It's a joke. This is modern times. Handing out tips is a thing of the past. I wouldn't want to depend on tips. Perhaps you like it.

Again, if you call something a failure, you have to identify what it was created/is trying to accomplish and show how it has failed to do that. It was created as a way to enable service industries to pay their workers as little as possible. As I said, the vast majority of said workers were female back then, and most still are now. So they had very little agency, socially or politically. The tipping culture has in fact been a roaring SUCCESS because tipped workers in most of the US are still paid a minimum or even submininum wage. 

You seem to think I'm defending the practice. I'm not. It is, however, very well entrenched. Should it be abandoned? Yes. Have steps been taken in that direction? Yes; I mentioned minimum wage increases in several states, and in fact, people DO tip less there. It's a start.

Whether or not employees can be tipped, or are allowed to solicit tips, is a corporate decision. Fast food restaurants have almost never allowed it. Starbucks wanted to differentiate itself from fast food, and allowing tips is one of the many ways they've tried. Don't misinterpret a corporate policy as some kind of grand societal barometer.

I'm neither trying to show you how smart I am nor trying to convince you of anything; I don't care what anyone thinks about my intelligence, because it is what it is regardless, and your mind is obviously made up re America's beknighted socioeconomic fabric. 

I'd have to say that your misapprehensions about the US are quite typical and brought about by observing (and judging) us from a distance. Europeans do sometimes exude an air of superiority, and that attitude isn't even completely unjustified. But I think you conveniently forget the routine, tiresomely repetitive horrors of your history that were the catalyst for the egalitarian utopia you all are now.

I was surprised at less tipping in Europe.Nevertheless I am always generous for 

good service.