Oh ya tipping is wacky and the tax being included would be cool and all it just drives me mental when people can’t accept the different service. I serve people from all over the world, I adjust to different cultures and attempt to communicate in multiple languages every shift. There are a lot of subtle differences like In Canada and America you sit at the table and you are waited on, you don’t get up for anything. In a lot of European countries and Australia the woman sits down and the man goes to the bar to get the drinks. They get up for everything and I explain to every new hire you have to explain to them we have table service or it just starts to mess up the system we have. Another funny one is that some elderly English people don’t like when dishes are cleared as people finish, it has to be all at once when everybody is done. They get offended when servers who don’t know go to clear somebodies plate. I’ve had people act scared and tell me they aren’t ready to order yet when I go over with water and introduce myself. They literally start to panic because they don’t understand that a server is just coming to greet them and give them water.

The part that bothered me is how he conflates that with tipping. Like of course you aren’t going to tip someone in a country were they don’t come to your table, but the service being different is about more than tipping. It’s not that I’m serving somebody a certain way because I want a tip, I’m serving them that way because that’s what the expectation is. That’s what we call service, that’s our culture. Even if we abolished tipping we would still serve that way in every style of restaurant, not just the fancy ones. So it’s like, stop being rude to me for serving in a way that reflects my culture while you’re supposed to be here experiencing said culture. It’s like if you were rude to a server in South Korea because you had to wave them over when in reality they think it’s pushy for them to come to your table without being asked.

Actually I would be interested to hear if most of the restaurants you come across serve sharing style by bringing dishes out whenever they’re ready instead of coursed out, that seems to be something across Asia but all my experience is the people I serve.