Waitstaff deserve tips because they need to make a living and we've got a bass-ackward structure in place to make that happen. It's a real "fog of war" situation right now, though - I've heard from more than a couple servers that if you really want to register your displeasure at your service, tip a dollar because lots of people don't tip on principle. Then there's the fact that there's no real agreement as to who gets tipped what and any etiquette guideline is more likely to tell you what to tip the paperboy than the data recovery specialist. Into this we've got the typical opportunities afforded by the large and organized over the small and disparate - restaurants skimming off tips, the IRS confusing the issue, etc. So what I see is a situation where everyone is pissed off - except the restaurants. I'm into pissing restaurants off.