Research demonstrates time and again that tipping has no correspondence with value provided. My own experience as a bartender anecdotally backs this up: someone

Research demonstrates time and again that tipping has no correspondence with value provided. My own experience as a bartender anecdotally backs this up: someone visits the bar and asks for a single ($5) beer and tips $10 for my amazing value-adding service of opening the refrigerator and popping the top off a bottle for them. For another person I make four long islands (long islands have four alcohols and some mixers - not difficult to make but tedious, and the patrons witness the entire process) and they tip me a dollar on their $40 bill. These are all cases that happened in the last month. But that last sentence of yours sounds more insightful than it is: customers always pay employee wages. It’s not a subsidy, customers are the source of the base income as well as any bonuses, commissions, tips, etc. That’s how business works. Revenue covers liabilities, if successful. I’ve thought about it time and time again and the only justification I can identify for tipping is as a proxy for surge pricing. Maybe we just need to figure out how to price products based on business traffic. Do you price the empty hours higher because of the added value of privacy and exclusivity, or the busy ones to keep traffic manageable? The practice of “gratuity included for tables of 8 or more” seems to suggest the latter is a more natural business move, but there might be a place for the former as well…