[Dottore]

Restaurants divide tips according to their internal policies - and these differ from place to place. A certain level of pooling is common - a percentage often goes to busboys or the kitchen.

Some very trendy restaurants are so sought after by waiters - that they work entirely without salary and live solely on their tips - which can be considerable. (I know of waiters who regularly pull down in the region of $1,000 per night in tips. That is after all only 25% of $4,000 worth of sales - or 40 diners at $100 head.) To get around the minimum wage laws in this situation - they often agree to assign their wages back their employer.

In Chinese restaurants - of which there are many in my town - waiters are often not permitted to keep their tips at all - they go straight to the owners. If the waiters don't like this - well there are always others who want their job. So you are often very foolish to leave a large tip in a Chinese restaurant - unless you really think the owner deserves this. The same is true for many Asian establishments.

In short the whole practise of automatic tipping is really very silly. Why, for example, should a waiter get a tip and not the guy in the kitchen? Makes no sense. Why only in the restaurant business? Why not at the supermarket or the dry-cleaners?