In most cases the service you get is merely a function of how well managed the place is that's it. I believe that it's somewhat unfair to withhold an employee's salary because their management is dysfunctional. Even if they were downright lazy they still work somewhere where they are allowed to be downright lazy.
I say this as someone who has worked for both very dysfunctional management as well as very functional, process oriented management. The difference between how well customers were served was like night and day. Some issues that contributed to the dysfunction was lack of training and lack of feedback.
Also, in many places tips are pooled, every single person I know who was a tipped employee was part of a tip pool, so you probably taking away salary from an amazing server in the process. Sometimes back of the house is tipped out a small percentage as well.
Restaurant service is, above all, a team effort, so basically tipping is super unfair no matter how you slice it.
My brother-in-law is a waiter and his work complaints echoed this. At his current employer they pool tips, but mgmt has overstaffed for nights that are traditionally slow. That means easier work, but also less money.
In places where they don't pool the direct wait staff might still need to give a cut to others. It was explained to me that the busboys will sandbag you if they feel cheated, and then good luck turning over tables in your section when they haven't been cleared.
>mgmt has overstaffed for nights that are traditionally slow
Of course management doesn't have an incentive not to over staff because they aren't paying the employees hardly anything anyways. Add that with employees bribing^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htipping other employees and, wow, what a dysfunctional system.
I'd imagine bartenders would pretty much always be required to pool tips with each other since whenever there's more than one working they always work in a team.
Why is it my responsibility to do performance reviews of restaurant employees? The management already forced me into a performance rating system through tips, I shouldn't have to sit down with the manager to do a detailed performance review too. Besides, if the food and service was so bad that it warranted a $0 tip, I'm probably not coming back.
For one thing they have no idea if you have a legitimate complaint, are someone who has such high standards that it's not worth catering to, or simply a cheap bastard. They care strongly about the former, will shake their head at the middle and will dislike you if it were the latter.
If you actually speak up they'll have a better idea.
My point was that if the service was bad enough to not leave a tip, complaining to the manager might result in you not paying for the food, either.
You can demand that the bill be discounted or waived entirely (or that what you paid be refunded) if you didn't get what you were expecting. For instance, if you walk out of a movie because the sound was a half second out of sync and the picture was out of focus, you could just eat the price of the ticket, or you could find a manager and get your money back for the low, low cost of just voicing what was wrong with your experience.
What else would you do? Angrily write a bad Yelp review in your car?
I don't care about getting comp'ed food (unless the order was obviously wrong and I was over charged), that's not going to make up for the 2 hours of wasted time. I'm not going to spend another 15 minutes waiting to talk to a manager while I "demand" that the bill be discounted or waived.
Fortunately, I live in an area where there is no end of new restaurants to explore, if I have bad service at one, then I just won't go back there. Problem solved (for me).
For the record, I've never tipped 0% (but have tipped only 10% for particularly bad service).
Really? Surely if they're a terrible waiter/terrible service, you shouldn't leave any tip.