Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

If your stance is that any one should suck up to anyone else on either side of the give and take between a restaurant and its customers I am sorry to say we may never agree about anything.

The first confusion may be that tipping as addressed at Augieland is part of the behavior of a person that frequents a place and experiences a different version of the occasion than the general fly by night public. The first assumption must be you wouldn’t want to frequent every place. You become a regular at a place you find unique and special. I don’t share wine with strangers, I share wine with people whose company I enjoy, why else would I want to be and thusly become a regular at that place.

Retail sales and restaurant service can not really be compared. If you buy a shirt from a jerk as opposed to a nice guy you still own the same shirt. If great food is served by a poor waiter the entire experience is different. Yet still in retail, if someone shops at a place frequently and is a pain in the ass the staff will happily do all they can to allow some one else to assist him, and a fondly remembered returning customer receives far more attention than an unremembered face.

I am afraid the discussion of whether tipping is a good or bad thing is has very little to do with my stance on tipping. You are not sucking up to a server; you are acknowledging a job well done as a component to an experience in the currently accepted manner. I don’t care if you tip or don’t, in a nut shell I feel good service is one of the major aspects of whether or not I enjoy a place enough to return regularly and should therefore be rewarded. Don’t agree? Fine but don’t then ask me why I don’t have a tough time getting reservations at your favorite places.