If the tip is a mandatory % that is charged directly by the business and not an amount you willingly decide to give, it's not actually a tip. I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept for americans.
What gets me is people/businesses that say “if you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out”.
No. If you can’t afford to pay your workers a livable wage without tips, you can’t afford to stay in business.
Next time you tip, inform your server that it has nothing to to with their performance, you're actually just adding what they would have made if they were paid appropriately to the base price.
edit: I'm not being facetious, I have added 20% no matter what for at least 20 years. I've tipped servers that I'm pretty sure I hated.
edit: You're paying less for your meals than you would in your hypothetical ideal circumstance irt tipping, and that difference is coming out of the server's pocket. If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother you, but you're no freedom fighter.
Business owners are shirking their responsibility to pay a living wage. They’re also setting up a socioeconomic reality that pits customers against workers to absolve them of that responsibility.
Go ahead and keep advocating for tipping though, I’m sure you’re really making progress.
If you appropriately price and ban tipping, people will just tip on top of that to prove how much better they are to their servants than other customers, and walk away complaining about how expensive your restaurant is. If you set a mandatory tip of 20%, it means absolutely nothing: you could say the tip was 10,000% and set prices so that a 10,000% tip brought in exactly the same revenue. Setting an arbitrary mandatory 20% tip (the current customary routinely generous amount) will actually trick most people into not tipping.