So Who Do These People Work For?

I have a question:  Just who, I would ask, do waiters and waitresses work for?

The tipping culture here in America has become such a problem, for everyone, that I am finally forced to ask this eternal - and infernal - question:

            Who do they work for?

Who do the baristas at Starbucks work for?  Do they work for that coffee company, or do they work for me, the person they are there to serve?  Or the young lady or man (or other) who brings me a plate of food at Macaroni Grill?  Or the folks who bring my groceries from Wal-Mart?  

Who do they work for?  Do they work for Starbucks and Macaroni Grill and Wal-Mart?  If so, why am I expected to increase/augment their income by providing "tips" to their employees for doing what I'm already paying for?  In any way, shape or form? 

The concept of "tipping," just so you know, grew out of 18th Century England.  The idea of throwing the waiter an extra tuppence "To Insure Promptness" might actually get them their mead a bit quicker.  

The custom then followed English immigrants across "the pond" and has now infested America.  Where it seems we poor consumers are expected/required/demanded/extorted to provide a tip upon every transaction. 

So here's the question:  Unless our servants do something extra, something above and beyond what they're already being paid to do, by their employers, why should I, or anyone for that matter, be expected to pay them extra?  

Why don't the restaurants and coffee shops and the Wal-Marts pay them such that they no longer hold me hostage for an extra "tip?"  And if not, why do their employees continue to work at these establishments?  

Why has their interminable angst been transferred by some sleight-of-hand to us, the consumers? 

And will it ever be that I'm no longer forced to stare down some pimply-faced miscreant in an apron over whether a 20% tip is "enough," or if it should be more like "50%?  

This, as they say, has gotten out of hand!

What makes this my subject for today is me, The Chuckmeister, your Loyal Scribe Without Portfolio, finding out just who provides all those little tablet computers you see in the restaurants and barber shops and coffee emporiums.  The ones that ask, "How much of a tip would you like to leave?"  A "sharp-ended close," in a salesman's parlance.  Making you feel guilty if you don't roll over and submit.  Transferring the awkward stare from the waitpersons to a stupid machine.  

Is this what we've become?

Turns out that company, "Toast," provides these little $3,500 computers for "FREE!"  Except, they get 3% of all the monetary transactions.  All of them.  From every restaurant and bar and grill and coffee shop.  All over the Nation.  All over the WORLD!  And the bigger the tip you give your server/helper/ bringer/mixer, the more of the total they take!  They make $3 out of a $100 bill!  It's to their advantage for you to tip exorbitantly.  I've even seen these things in self-checkout lines!    

It's enough to make you want to just stay home, roll down the shades, double-lock the doors and wait until all this foolishness is dead and gone.  Declared over.  Please God! 

Are you getting this?  

The Simple Solution:  a.) Pay the servers and the baristas and the delivery persons from the Starbucks and Wal-Marts enough to live.  Enough to want to work for these places without having to rely on me and mine for supplementary income.  They're not my children, nor do I need to support them.  

Or b.), provide an alternative in each of these locations for me and others to seat ourselves, get our own water, place our own orders, and wait our own tables.  And maybe brew and pour our own coffee.  Of course, that would wring out all the rationale for going out to eat.       

Or maybe we could all just stay home.   

And then leave it up to us as to whether we can afford to buy that product or that service once its "true cost," minus the tips, is factored in and fully calculated.  

If it makes that plate of spaghetti unaffordable, so be it.  That's what's called a "Free Market Economy."  The Dollars flow to the worthy.  

Tough Love.  The Only Way...