Why I tip more, and why you should too (11 Viewers)

[Venturalvn]

Tipping dealers based on how big of a pot you win is just plain stupid. They don't give you money back when you lose, so why is your tip based on how much you win in a hand?

Tipping, at its core, should be given based on level of service. Why does the level of service change if you scoop a pot at 1/3 vs. 100/200?

I tip dealers when I win a pot sure enough, but I also tip them after the down based on how well they've run the game. I have gone entire downs without being dealt a playable hand (so no tip from any hands), but I tipped the dealer when they're being pushed based on their ability to run a clean game. The tip I give after winning a hand isn't going to go up or down based on how the cards roll out, but the tip at the end of the down sure as hell will depending on how well they've run the game.

 

[rustycheerio]

Tipping dealers based on how big of a pot you win is just plain stupid. They don't give you money back when you lose, so why is your tip based on how much you win in a hand?

Tipping, at its core, should be given based on level of service. Why does the level of service change if you scoop a pot at 1/3 vs. 100/200?

I tip dealers when I win a pot sure enough, but I also tip them after the down based on how well they've run the game. I have gone entire downs without being dealt a playable hand (so no tip from any hands), but I tipped the dealer when they're being pushed based on their ability to run a clean game. The tip I give after winning a hand isn't going to go up or down based on how the cards roll out, but the tip at the end of the down sure as hell will depending on how well they've run the game.

the same action is still occurring whether a 1/2 or 100/200, yes. but at the end of the day, if you're playing 100/200 blinds; and you can only give a 1 or 5 based off a $25k pot, that is just plain selfish IMO.
you have the ability to lose $X just as the same ability to win (generally speaking), but the person facilitating the game could appreciate the toke so much more than the person playing- i am having trouble explaining what i mean.
but when people play giant stakes like you're referring, even sometimes smaller stakes, they get numb to the actual value of the dollar they are gambling.

to me, i'd rather the dealer win my money than other players (unless the whale)... i play recreationally and likely not as often as most here, hence my opinion.

i agree with tipping based off being able to run the game as well-

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Tipping enables employers to underpay employee. Consumers are essentially funding the underpaid staffers wage.

Therefore we should reduce tipping, employer is then forced to pay more. However, to cover the new expense employer raises costs?

I would hope that this is pretty obvious. Ultimately, the customer always pays for any business's employees, one way or another. Am I right?

I know this is off the topic of poker and tipping dealers, but based on some of the other comments I'm reading, I think it's worth adding to this thread.

I've had a lot of opportunity to give thought to the tipping culture in the US. I have 9 kids and kids-in-law. Most of them have worked at one time or another in the hospitality industry, and 4 still do as grown adults. I've heard every horror story you can imagine regarding people not tipping in situations where they obviously should be. We're talking fine dining establishments where a server may spend a couple hours taking care of 2-3 tables, or if it's a very large party, maybe the entire evening on one table. Only to then be stiffed with a tiny tip, or even no tip at all. Ultimately, a good employer will somewhat take care of this situation, but some will do nothing about it.

So as someone who has considered opening my own place, I've often wondered if there wasn't a better system. My idea is to track each server's tabs, then pay them some percentage of those tabs as their "employer paid" tip income. I feel that this is better than just paying the waiters a flat hourly rate. One of the reasons that tipping is advantageous to both businesses and their wait staff is that it encourages employees to take good care of the customers, and to be sales people by recommending appetizers, dishes & drinks drinks that run up the total bill. As a small business owner, I wouldn't want a system that takes those incentives away from my wait staff. The best waiters who sell more product and take very good care of our customers should make more money than the ones who don't.

Obviously, in order to shift this pay structure from the customer's tips to the employer, you have to raise prices. So now, to anyone just looking at the menu, you appear to not be competitive with other area establishments providing the same level of food and drinks while still expecting customers to tip. So you have to be sure that the customer understands this sea change with advertising and posted signs in the restaurant and directly on the menus.

I think a system could be put together like this that would be workable. It's going to take some effort, and there may be some difficult hurdles. But I'd like to see someone try it and see what happens.

But to any of you who think you're going to make even a tiny dent in the current system by simply not tipping when it's expected, you're not. The system is just too ingrained in our society. If you go out to any restaurant or bar where you get table service, and you just do not tip, you're only being as asshole and a cheap bastard, and you're only hurting the lowly person who is serving you. You're not hurting the business owner one bit.

 

[doublebooyah85]

I would hope that this is pretty obvious. Ultimately, the customer always pays for any business's employees, one way or another. Am I right?

 

[CraigT78]

SOCIALISM!

BRING IT ON.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

SOCIALISM!

BRING IT ON.

 

[Jimulacrum]

the person facilitating the game could appreciate the toke so much more than the person playing

This perspective, I can appreciate a lot.

Whenever we can do small things that cost us little and disproportionately benefit someone else, that's a great deal. Serve food to homeless people. Make sure a wallet you found gets back to its owner. Help an elderly person hoist a body into a trunk. It costs you little but helps the other person so much.

That said, when I play poker, the benefit of over-tipping isn't really disproportionate to the expense, to put it in terms of the maxim. I'm not so much better off than poker dealers that it feels reasonable to shower them with double or triple the customary tip, even if it may interfere with the health of the game or my ability to stay in the black.

The occasional over-tip for the purpose of showing appreciation for exceptional service?* Sure. I'll deviate from the standard tip when the situation truly calls for it. But scaling up the standard per-hand tip in general, I consider a bad idea, unless you're so much better off than poker dealers that you want to do it as an act of charity and maybe a little ego. I don't buy that everyone should do it.

Spoiler: *

Y'know, what a tip used to be before it turned into a quasi-voluntary surcharge.

 

[Darthhoodie]

Lol, I just wanted to use this meme!

Tipping only benefits the business owner, not the employee, and not the customer.
I was a bartender all through grad school. I worked in every position in a restaurant / bar. I paid for all of college with tips, I'm not saying you shouldn't tip it's just a messed up system where certain businesses are allowed by law to not pay their employees. Wait staff gets paid well under minimum wage by their employer. Why are they allowed to do this? If I run a hardware store I can't pay my people less than minimum wage then ask my customers to pick up the slack, so why does the restaurant owner get to do this? Because its just historically accepted from a time before such federal regulations existed(1938ish 1st min wage).

Businesses should be forced to pay their employees a real wage, pass that increase off in some capacity to the customer, then we the customer will know exactly what things cost and can decide if we want the service or not. The employees have stability in that they know exactly how much they make day to day, customers know exactly what thing cost, and the business owner is responsible for paying their staff.

Unfortunately, in the USA, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Almost no way to reverse this so tip away!

 

[Josh Kifer]

View attachment 1291991

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

View attachment 1292011

Lol, I just wanted to use this meme!

Tipping only benefits the business owner, not the employee, and not the customer.
I was a bartender all through grad school. I worked in every position in a restaurant / bar. I paid for all of college with tips, I'm not saying you shouldn't tip it's just a messed up system where certain businesses are allowed by law to not pay their employees. Wait staff gets paid well under minimum wage by their employer. Why are they allowed to do this? If I run a hardware store I can't pay my people less than minimum wage then ask my customers to pick up the slack, so why does the restaurant owner get to do this? Because its just historically accepted from a time before such federal regulations existed(1938ish 1st min wage).

Businesses should be forced to pay their employees a real wage, pass that increase off in some capacity to the customer, then we the customer will know exactly what things cost and can decide if we want the service or not. The employees have stability in that they know exactly how much they make day to day, customers know exactly what thing cost, and the business owner is responsible for paying their staff.

Unfortunately, in the USA, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Almost no way to reverse this so tip away!


View attachment 1292014

Love the memes! But I must point out that you are wrong... about one thing you stated.

I bolded it in your post. No one working in a restaurant is getting paid less than minimum wage. By law. If the (agreed, it's much lower) wait staff minimum hourly wage, plus tips, does not total more than the standard minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference. Which still sucks, because no one who waits tables is planning on only making minimum wage.

 

[Darthhoodie]

All waitstaff is paid less than minimum wage by the employer, obviously they are not taking home less than minimum wage.
When I was in the game many years ago it was like $3 per hour, paid by the company.
I know many waitstaff making a hell of a lot more than minimum wage, but that's not my point.
My argument was that the employers should be the ones paying the salary not the customers.

Back to the OP, I think most dealers get paid min wage + tips. This seems ridiculous to me. The casino should pay these people a real wage, refuse tips, and keep all that money in play. Its not like they can't afford it.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

All waitstaff is paid less than minimum wage by the employer, obviously they are not taking home less than minimum wage.
When I was in the game many years ago it was like $3 per hour, paid by the company.
I know many waitstaff making a hell of a lot more than minimum wage, but that's not my point.
My argument was that the employers should be the ones paying the salary not the customers.

This brings us back to one of the points I made in my long post above. For any business that has customers, and I can't really think of any that don't, the customers are essentially paying not only all the employees wages, but all of the business's other expenses as well. Not to mention providing the profits that go to the owners. Customers are the source of almost all business income. Any attempt to eliminate or reduce tipping is going to result in either the businesses raising their prices, massive income reductions to wait staff, or both.

 

[Budha]

Instead of assuming I'm stupid, maybe look at the structure of the thing I'm talking about, specifically publicly traded corporations.

This distributed-ownership model strips away whatever moral and personal choices a single owner or small group of owners could make—for example, to maintain a certain character or to ensure that they're a net benefit to their communities.

A business owned by a million people has no such compunctions. When that many people own something, their overall interest in that thing is distilled down to what they have in common, and the only thing a large number of investors in a business all have in common is greed. They want to make as much money as reasonably possible out of the business. They don't care if it benefits the public or its employees or anyone else, as long as the investors perceive no harm to themselves. Their one and only unifying motivation is profiting from the investment.

It's not an accident that essentially every business that goes public turns into the McDonald's of its industry. This is what massively distributed ownership does. It turns everything into McDonald's and Walmart and vapid pop music. No character whatsoever, no regard for the deleterious effects of their business in the places where they operate. Just endless money-printing, limited only by what the law permits (minus what they can corrupt out of the way). Take the law out of the way and they'd reestablish chattel slavery in a couple generations, and the worst people you can imagine would be lining up eagerly to get paid to manage it.

The maximum-efficiency model is good for tightening up a ship. It's a great way to raise funds. But over the long term, left to run indefinitely, it turns what could be productive institutions into soulless rent-seeking machines that ultimately stop serving people and start abusing them for money. We as human beings should not want all of a society's businesses to be like this, and a sensible political system would have implemented a way to rein in this problem. Instead the problem has corrupted the political system.

The fundamental flaw is your logic is your foundational rationale for the existence of any company/corporation (regardless of private or public structure).

From a purely economic perspective, the purpose of any company/corporation is to drive a return, period.

If they fail to drive a positive return, the venture will ultimately fail - full stop.

Companies do not exist for the benefit of society, to think otherwise is unrealistic. However, the degree to which the service or product they provide benefits society will largely determine their success. It often behooves a company to be a positive corporate citizen, however that is not the purpose for which they exist. To confuse these concepts is a fundamental error.

I agree, corporate America is ripe with all kinds of BS. Lack of vision, leadership, and playing a short game for qrtly returns while continually ceading ground to other countries playing the long game.

But to classify all companies as evil entities seems like an emotional vs rational position.

 

[Jimulacrum]

The fundamental flaw is your logic is your foundational rationale for the existence of any company/corporation (regardless of private or public structure).

From a purely economic perspective, the purpose of any company/corporation is to drive a return, period.

If they fail to drive a positive return, the venture will ultimately fail - full stop.

Companies do not exist for the benefit of society, to think otherwise is unrealistic. However, the degree to which the service or product they provide benefits society will largely determine their success. It often behooves a company to be a positive corporate citizen, however that is not the purpose for which they exist. To confuse these concepts is a fundamental error.

I agree, corporate America is ripe with all kinds of BS. Lack of vision, leadership, and playing a short game for qrtly returns while continually ceading ground to other countries playing the long game.

But to classify all companies as evil entities seems like an emotional vs rational position.

I didn't say they were evil. I said they're greed machines, and they are. What I've said doesn't conflict at all with what you've said.

I can even recognize that this institutional structure may serve some purposes. It doesn't necessarily need to be eradicated completely.

But to allow them to have the freedom and power that they enjoy in the modern world is madness. For fuck's sake, we have an entire industry whose main source of revenue is stoking warmongering so it can sell weapons. To say that corporations have begun to run rampant would be a vast understatement.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Amoral. That's the word my brain was looking for while I wrote that.

Not evil. Incapable of genuine morality.

 

[Darthhoodie]

This brings us back to one of the points I made in my long post above. For any business that has customers, and I can't really think of any that don't, the customers are essentially paying not only all the employees wages, but all of the business's other expenses as well. Not to mention providing the profits that go to the owners. Customers are the source of almost all business income. Any attempt to eliminate or reduce tipping is going to result in either the businesses raising their prices, massive income reductions to wait staff, or both.

Probably both.

 

[KHarp1]

The argument that it's the casino who should be paying their employees better versus the tip economy we Americans live in is a tricky thing when it comes to card rooms. Most card rooms are not profit generators for casinos, so, forcing the cost back on them could lead to that space being used for different games/machines. I'd rather not see that happen. I also don't like the tip culture that we have here in America.

I'm not tipping unless I'm dragging pots, and, I don't mind tipping a pleasant, engaging efficient dealer when I pull a pot. I'm not too concerned about whether I tip $20 in a 6 hour session, or, $40... if I'm cashing out up $350 in a $1/$2 after tipping $40/$50 throughout the night then both the dealers and I have done well. I'm not concerned about taking that money off the table... its just a matter of when it comes off. I was taking it off at the end of the night, I just spent some of it in a way some apparently don't approve of.

 

[Moxie Mike]

I haven't read all the responses so I apologize if this is redundant.

The obvious advantage of tipping is that the prospect of extra money incentivizes the service provider to perform at a higher level in an effort to earn additional compensation. Conversely, it empowers the consumer to deny compensation to poor service providers.

This system has a lot of merit - but in recent times it seems as though it no longer serves it's originally intended purpose.

Because nowadays, as @Jimulacrum pointed out, tipping has become a function where the consumer is more or less socially conditioned to supplement a worker's salary. And furthermore, it seems like EVERYONE has their hand out. Hell - I took my car through a car-wash tunnel recently at a local chain. A kid who worked there walked up to me and begins offering unrequested and unneeded assistance navigating the menu-selection process and at the end actually asked me if I'd like to put a tip on the bill to which I responded 'why TF would I add a tip? A machine does ALL the work.'

As to how this pertains to poker dealers - my perspective is that it does serve it's intended purpose as an incentive to the dealer to perform their jobs better.

In the simplest terms, a good dealer is going to get more hands per hour in than a weak one. A good dealer is also going to pitch the cards faster, have improved accuracy and keeps slow players from holding up the game. This is worth paying a premium for IMO.

I also view tipping as an obligation from the person who drags the pot of course - but it's not a reward for the dealer's performance in a particular hand. For example, larger pots take longer to deal - and if someone has a decision to make and tanks for a bit - that holds the game up too. So I don't mind tipping a bit more from a sizable pot because it doesn't seem fair that the dealer should make less money just because the hand took longer to reach a conclusion. This is especially true in split pot games like O8. The dealer has to do substantially more work when the game is anything other than NLHE.

So tipping a dealer is done in my view on behalf of the table for a given hand. EVERYONE at the table benefits from a quality dealer, but whoever drags the pot pays the gratuity. It may not be a perfect system, but it still works.

 

[Budha]

Amoral. That's the word my brain was looking for while I wrote that.

Not evil. Incapable of genuine morality.

Companies are “Amoral”. I totally 100% agree with that!

 

[jpietrella]

1. The dealers are giving you money, not food. You tip at a restaurant when you're leaving. Why would you only give a dollar or two to someone who just pushed you hundreds, giving you the ability to go to that restaurant even more times.

I have a lot of thoughts about all of your points but this one bothered me.

The dealers are actually not giving me money. They're calling the action, dealing the cards and generally running the game at the table.

And there's absolutely a difference between tipping a dealer and tipping a waitperson at a restaurant. For the most part, wait staff are considered tipped employees, which means the minimum wage they can be paid is lower. Depending on the state and perhaps even the casino, that's not always the case with dealers - although I'm sure a large portion of their income is from tips.

Even still, I agree with the argument of paying them a fair wage instead.

Tipping is nice but I've become incredibly annoyed with how much it's expected. The reason the money in that pot is now in my pocket is not because the dealer pushed it to me, it's because I won it.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

The argument that it's the casino who should be paying their employees better versus the tip economy we Americans live in is a tricky thing when it comes to card rooms. Most card rooms are not profit generators for casinos, so, forcing the cost back on them could lead to that space being used for different games/machines. I'd rather not see that happen. I also don't like the tip culture that we have here in America.

I'm not tipping unless I'm dragging pots, and, I don't mind tipping a pleasant, engaging efficient dealer when I pull a pot. I'm not too concerned about whether I tip $20 in a 6 hour session, or, $40... if I'm cashing out up $350 in a $1/$2 after tipping $40/$50 throughout the night then both the dealers and I have done well. I'm not concerned about taking that money off the table... its just a matter of when it comes off. I was taking it off at the end of the night, I just spent some of it in a way some apparently don't approve of.

This is a very, very good point, that if casinos had to pay the dealers more, then we might not have as many poker rooms. Thanks for pointing this out. For this reason alone, I would consider upping my tips a bit in casinos.

 

[upNdown]

And what about tournaments? It's easy to get everyboy to toss the dealer a buck a few times ab hour in a cash game. But tipping at the end of a tournamet is a different story. And then when you win a big prize, it's tough to calculate the right amount. I've tipped ten percent when I've mincashed and like 4 percent when I've won a big prize. How can that be right? And I know plenty of cashers are tipping less or nothing.
Tipping at the end of tournaments is bullshit - they should just rake another two or three points, give it to the dealers and be done with it.

 

[RichMahogany]

lmao this talk about ALL servers/bartenders/etc getting paid less than minimum wage is false.

Staff in some states can be paid a “server’s wage” such as in Massachusetts.

It’s not the same for everyone, everywhere.

Source: Me, a tipped employee

 

[Darthhoodie]

@RichMahogany yes this is currently changing at one point it was like most states could do this but now many states have outlawed this and force places to pay minimum. I suspect that at some point almost all states will ban this.

https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/#:~:text=Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware,subminimum wages for certain residents.
Something like 35 states have a lower tipped wage than the state minimum according to this data, but I read an article that said that as many as 20 states were voting on banning the lower tipped wage this year, so who knows.

Also,
There are many studies that dispute the idea that tipping increases service quality.
The funny thing is that a common thread in this research is that the customers feel that tipping increases service but the servers state that the tip is just a small consideration in the quality of service they give. Things like workload, stress, and the complexity of orders all were more influential than tipping in determining the quality of service they provide. Kind of interesting to look at the two perspectives on tipping and quality of service. There were also considerations given to level of service determined by the perception of a good or bad tip. So maybe a young couple, or people who are dressed poorly receiving less service than a well dressed older couple. Obviously this is based on some preconceived bias by the server but it is something servers sited as a factor in quality of service. Remember we tip after the service is rendered so servers may be acting on perceived tip amount not actual tip amount.

Here is one of the studies that speak to this, not sure if you need a research gate account to read it but at least you can see the abstract.
Gratuity: A Contextual Understanding of Tipping Norms From the Perspective of Tipped Employees. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.
Seltzer, Richard and Holona LeAnne Ochs. 2010.

 

[MrRossKeys]

As a small business owner, I wouldn't want a system that takes those incentives away from my wait staff. The best waiters who sell more product and take very good care of our customers should make more money than the ones who don't.

Obviously, in order to shift this pay structure from the customer's tips to the employer, you have to raise prices.

I agree with the last sentence of that first paragraph, but I don't agree that the answer is "obviously" the prices have to be raised.

I've been a small business owner with employees and contractors for 15 years. I didn't raise my prices to address better performance by better employees... I wrote a robust policy that I shared with the entire team that explained rate increases for the higher performing employees. They knew exactly what they needed to do per customer interaction to achieve the higher rate, and what the review process would look like to determine if they were hitting those metrics.

Took a hell of a lot of energy and effort to achieve, but this was what I thought would be best to incentivize fairly without passing that cost to my customers.

(Maybe this isn't achievable at scale... maybe it is... ultimately I believe there are creative ways to figure this out)

As to how this pertains to poker dealers - my perspective is that it does serve it's intended purpose as an incentive to the dealer to perform their jobs better.

In the simplest terms, a good dealer is going to get more hands per hour in than a weak one. A good dealer is also going to pitch the cards faster, have improved accuracy and keeps slow players from holding up the game. This is worth paying a premium for IMO.

I also view tipping as an obligation from the person who drags the pot of course - but it's not a reward for the dealer's performance in a particular hand. For example, larger pots take longer to deal - and if someone has a decision to make and tanks for a bit - that holds the game up too. So I don't mind tipping a bit more from a sizable pot because it doesn't seem fair that the dealer should make less money just because the hand took longer to reach a conclusion.

The more I think about it, the more I find less and less difference between what a dealer is supposed to do and what a good dealer actually does. I expect dealers to be able to deal short hands, long hands, hands where players tank, hands where there are split pots to calculate, etc. etc. There is nothing about the actual dealing that deserves a tip in my opinion. Every dealer should be able to pitch the cards fast enough that the game moves. Every dealer should have a minimum level of acceptable skill.

I think dealers that do deserve tips are dealers who smile, are pleasant, interact with players in positive ways, shut down negative habits (like players talking in other languages during a hand, etc), and overall add value to the game itself through their individual personality or contribution. I'd pay tips just to keep a dealer at my table that makes the game more pleasant to play.

But... there shouldn't be an expectation that players need to tip in order to pay the wage of dealers. That's different than "we should or shouldn't tip good dealers." I think we all should tip good dealers.... I just think the definition of a good dealer is different for everyone.

Tipping is nice but I've become incredibly annoyed with how much it's expected. The reason the money in that pot is now in my pocket is not because the dealer pushed it to me, it's because I won it.

I agree with this 1000%. I want to tip because I'm having a good time... an even better time because of the dealer, not because their job awarded me a won pot. They have little to nothing to do with how much money I win or lose.

 

[Budha]

@RichMahogany yes this is currently changing at one point it was like most states could do this but now many states have outlawed this and force places to pay minimum. I suspect that at some point almost all states will ban this.

https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-tipped-employees-by-state/#:~:text=Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware,subminimum wages for certain residents.
Something like 35 states have a lower tipped wage than the state minimum according to this data, but I read an article that said that as many as 20 states were voting on banning the lower tipped wage this year, so who knows.

Also,
There are many studies that dispute the idea that tipping increases service quality.
The funny thing is that a common thread in this research is that the customers feel that tipping increases service but the servers state that the tip is just a small consideration in the quality of service they give. Things like workload, stress, and the complexity of orders all were more influential than tipping in determining the quality of service they provide. Kind of interesting to look at the two perspectives on tipping and quality of service. There were also considerations given to level of service determined by the perception of a good or bad tip. So maybe a young couple, or people who are dressed poorly receiving less service than a well dressed older couple. Obviously this is based on some preconceived bias by the server but it is something servers sited as a factor in quality of service. Remember we tip after the service is rendered so servers may be acting on perceived tip amount not actual tip amount.

Here is one of the studies that speak to this, not sure if you need a research gate account to read it but at least you can see the abstract.
Gratuity: A Contextual Understanding of Tipping Norms From the Perspective of Tipped Employees. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.
Seltzer, Richard and Holona LeAnne Ochs. 2010.

yeah, I gotta call BS on that study. Kinda like all the studies that say the open work space layout is more productive- lol.

Here’s a test. Order a drink at a crowded bar and don’t tip. See how long it takes you to get your 2nd drink.

Repeat, next time tip $5 on the 1st drink and see how long it takes to get the 2nd one - lol.

Edit: A good waiter is not only attentive, but is also upselling to bump up the ticket and maximize every table.

 

[Darthhoodie]

yeah, I gotta call BS on that study. Kinda like all the studies that say the open work space layout is more productive- lol.

Here’s a test. Order a drink at a crowded bar and don’t tip. See how long it takes you to get your 2nd drink.

Repeat, next time tip $5 on the 1st drink and see how long it takes to get the 2nd one - lol.

Edit: A good waiter is not only attentive, but is also upselling to bump up the ticket and maximize every table.

Ya dude I get It, I bartended for about 12 years so I was the guy ignoring the bad tippers.
But this isn't the only study that says this, there are dozens more if you care to read them.
They don't say there is no connection to good service and tipping, it's just a weak connection and a lot of these studies are based on interviews with wait staff, so its from their point of view not the customer.
Anecdotally I agree with you, but there is significant research that cast doubt on this, enough to question the well established norm that big tip = better service (That's what she said).

More reading if your bored:

"Does Tipping Motivate Service Providers?" (Lynn, M., & Grassman, J., 1990): This study found that tipping had no significant impact on the quality of service provided by waitstaff. The researchers observed that tips did not influence the speed of service or the overall satisfaction of customers.

"Gratuities and Customer Appraisal of Service Quality: An Examination of Moderators" (Lynn, M., & McCall, M., 2000): This study explored the relationship between tipping and service quality. It concluded that while tipping might influence the perception of service quality, it had minimal impact on actual service delivery. In other words, customers may perceive service as better when they tip more, but this perception does not necessarily align with the objective quality of service provided.

"The Effect of Tipping on Service Evaluation: A Test of Mediating Variables" (Lynn, M., & Thomas-Haysbert, C., 2003): This study investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between tipping and service evaluation. It found that while tipping could affect customers' perceptions of service quality, this effect was mediated by factors such as the perceived fairness of the tip amount rather than the actual service provided.

I think the most interesting thing common to most of these studies is the disconnect between the customers perception of big tip = good service and the servers who report that may not always be the case.

Having said this I usually over tip unless the person was rude or a jerk or something. Even if the service was slow or the person isn't good I will still hook them up just because I did the job for 20 years and I feel for service people.

I'm supposed to be looking at poker chips and this place has me reading studies about the phycology of tipping, WTF lol, PCF is a strange place!
This was fun but I don't want to talk about this anymore

 

[UniLover]

I'd tip more if I can find millionaires to buy my chips at the price I set.

 

[AH77]

I feel like point #1 is the same logic people use when they lose a big pot and abuse dealers. The dealers are not giving or taking any of your money so tipping after every hand you win makes about as much sense as cursing at the dealer when you lose. I do tip, but only because it’s the customary thing to do, not because I’m thanking the dealer for giving me a winning hand.

 

[bergs]

This is not entirely accurate, and you need to consider the full picture. Do you know all of the various employee costs that employers are responsible for. It’s good research, I encourage you to explore it.

Line item out ALL of the employer cost per employee and see how much it cost the business per employee. Then calculate what your anticipated revenue would be, then your net take home. Then balance that out vs the personal risk you take against your savings, house, etc., to open and run a business.

It’s like everyone thinks every company and business owner is printing money and screwing their employees and it’s so tiring TBH.

Run some numbers for yourself and see. On Avg, the fully loaded cost for an FTE is about 40% over the total compensation. So basically a 1.4 factor, and it’s much higher for companies that offer good benefits.

Individuals have responsibility to make themselves marketable and to develop skills and/or education to do so. If a business is required to pay the same wage to a retail cashier as what a skilled trade earns that business will cease to exist. The margins in the real world just aren’t that high - despite what you might believe.

Caesar’s and MGM are not mom and pop shops.

Nobody is expecting hyper large massively profitable organizations to pay their hourly workers like CEOs. Paying them a salary that didn’t depend on me augmenting so they have a roof over their heads and buy food would be nice.