IAmerican tipping culture: there is a near-involiate presumption that wait staff gets tipped N% of the order. Customary practice recently is N is 20. Theoretically, tips are tied to service received. In practice, variation from societal norms is vanishingly rare in polite company.
Waiters in higher priced restaurants do make better tips as a consequence of this. That might matter if the culture were designed. It was not, it merely came to be.
FYI, apart from suffering social opprobrium, the big reason to always tip is that wait staff are taxed on your imputed tip whether you give it or not. This leads to compelling social justice reasons to tip even if one does not share the culture.
Side note - in California 18.5% is the customary practice for tips, though, to make it easy, you can round up to 20%. No service person will complain. If you get lackluster service, you can point it out with a 15% tip. Poor service gets a 10% tip, and, will make it clear you are unhappy.
After 15 years of doing this (I'm from Canada, where tips aren't as proscribed, though they are still expected) I find it awkward and socially painful to pay the bill in countries in which there is not a tip expected (certain parts of Australia) - even though the locals assure me that no one will think the less of me.
I find etiquette fascinating, so I've read some books on it. Particularly, in tipping etiquette, prescriptive books seem to agree about one thing:
In the US, if you're going to tip less than 15%, you should not tip at all. You should leave nothing and ask to speak with a manager to explain why you won't. If the failure in service doesn't rise to that level, then 15% is the minimum polite tip.
Of course, it's your wallet so do what you think is best. But this seems like a reasonable practice, so I follow it. I've actually never had to speak to a manager about service at a restaurant, though.
The books are not correct as far as practice goes. 10% was standard for years and 15% for great service. Waiters of course have been trying to promote 20%, 22.5% and more as normal.
10% is not great, but is what senior citizens and rich politicians will leave if they tip at all.
10% is considered an insult in California, and will be treated as such.
I accidentally left a 10% tip at Fisherman's Wharf (Early on in my california experience), and was approached by the Maitre D as I was departing, asking what was wrong.
If you can't afford to tip, best just not to eat there in the first place.
I've also noticed that many lower-end restaurants will print pre-computed tip values at the bottom of the sales receipt for 15%, 18%, and 20% (both as a prompt and as a "nice" thing to do so you don't have to do the math yourself). But these values seem to always be calculated off the post-tax cost of the meal, whereas convention seems to be that you tip based on the pre-tax subtotal.
I like to keep it simple. 20% or 25% for fair to good or really great, 15% for poor service. I too don't like how people are trying to push this value up. But at the same time I have enough and I don't mind sharing some with a person who has just served me dinner.
You can do it pretty easily by successive halving.
10%, just move the decimal over
add 5% which is just half of 10%
add 2.5%, which is half of 5%
and add 1%, moving the decimal over twice
...of course you either naturally think that way or it seems like an unreasonable amount of work. YMMV.
Personally, I usually take 15% and add a bit depending on how good the service was.
A lot of the "classier" restaurants in my Canadian city, include a minimum 15% tip on the bill which is an interesting approach--Though it ravages the the funny after-meal banter I have when dining with my grandparents. "15% ARE THEY MAD?!!" Haha.
I'm in Canada, where tipping is just as expected as it is in the US. However, here it seems that 15% is standard for good service; 10% for fair service or a buffet/brunch meal (where the server was less-involved); and 20% or more for fantastic service. I had no idea California was so high.
Servers in all proper US/Canadian restaurants have to "tip out", which means paying a percentage of what should have been their tip on any table to support staff (e.g., bartender, host, kitchen). A server can tip out as much as 5% of the pre-tax bill --- or 1/3 of the expected standard tip --- which means that if you leave them no tip, they actually have to pay to serve you.
Interesting; in the US it's common practice for all tips received to be pooled, and then divided among the waitstaff, busboys, etc. I'm not sure if they're divided equally, but everyone should at least get a pre-decided portion.
Waiters in higher priced restaurants do make better tips as a consequence of this. That might matter if the culture were designed. It was not, it merely came to be.
FYI, apart from suffering social opprobrium, the big reason to always tip is that wait staff are taxed on your imputed tip whether you give it or not. This leads to compelling social justice reasons to tip even if one does not share the culture.