Have you ever worked as a waiter in a restaurant? Some restaurants let waiters keep all their tip, while others force waiters to share their tips equally in a c

Have you ever worked as a waiter in a restaurant? Some restaurants let waiters keep all their tip, while others force waiters to share their tips equally in a collective pool. Those that let waiters keep all their tip argue that the server has more motivation to give better service if they see the proportional impact of their effort. That makes servers happy which rubs off on customers, making the experience better for everyone involved. It is a win-win system that encourages self-improvement and punishes slackers. On the other hand, restaurants that pool their tips see everything in terms of a team effort. They argue that because of the initial training investment, they want to make sure no details are missed and the only way to do that is by encouraging collectivist thinking. Tip sharing is preferred in restaurants that offer a richer, more complicated experience (having to educate customers on what they're ordering, answering questions about fancy food and wine and pairing them, etc). They also argue that tip sharing makes servers more fungible in that they can switch between roles - waiting, busing, serving drinks. The first system ("keep tip") is simple to explain and is self-correcting. If a server underperforms it's easy to see and intervene. The second system ("tip pool") feels "bigger", has more moving parts (tips changing hands), and requires constant surveillance by the servers themselves, not to mention some bureaucracy to manage the money division. The keep-tip system can be said to be immune to slackers because a slacker cannot adversely affect the system beyond the scope of the slacker (other than dissatisfied customers not coming back); but slackers are a huge burden on the tip-pool system, as they effectively steal money from the other servers by not pulling their own weight as much as the others. This is a disincentive for the individual waiter that is above average and could be keeping more of their tips elsewhere. Despite the differences and the different opinions we can draw from them, both kinds of restaurants exist, but in the keep-tip type, waiters can be said to have more freedom and they have the right to keep the fruits of their labor. I've informally asked my friends and they all said if they could choose between keep-tip and tip-pool they'd choose keep-tip. So it must be the case that someone else other than waiters is benefiting from tip-pool systems. Now imagine trying to change a restaurant's tipping system. You say that because the pool-tip restaurant provided training, it's only fair that they contribute to the tip-pool. Then one of the waiters proposes a new system where there is no tip-pool, and claims the restaurant would work just as well, if not better, if it adopted keep-tip. Of course the other waiters argue "we work in a restaurant where we all pool tips for the good of all (busboys, dish cleaners, cooks, etc) and if someone benefits from this environment without paying into the pool, they're stealing from the rest of us". Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.