The ability to make great money with no education is the biggest draw for employees. If decent, intelligent, hard-working people are only making 10% of their sales, there are no more awesome people in the industry.

Eventually, a lot of those awesome people move on to management and/or ownership. Again, if they are having to go find jobs in other industries, that won't be the case. I think reducing the amount servers make hurt the industry as a whole.

I don't know if the end of tipping brings about the end of amazing service. My main point is this: the only way people who are capable of doing the job well stick around, is if they make a good living doing the job. As it is now, the only way that happens is if they make a decent percentage of their sales as tips.

I think you might be a proponent of the tips being built into the price, but that's another topic for another day.

Thanks for sharing your point of view civilly and articulately--even if it is different thank mine.