xepherys

It's a matter of a few things. First, tips, if given, are generally based on a percentage of your total bill. This goes back to the whole, if you don't want to tip someone, cook at home or serve yourself. *shrug* It just makes sense. This means that a tip on a $1.25 cup of coffee, versus a $4.25 cup of coffee are fairly different. When I go to Sbux I usually get an iced triple grande vanilla latte... with tax it's roughly $4.33. I usually give them the $0.67. It's not a lot of money, and frankly again if I can't afford to give them 67 cents, I really shouldn't be spending $4 on coffee when i can brew it at home for a mere fraction of the price.

As for the ingrained tipping in the US... it's part of how we operate. In Singapore, servers don't expect tips, but they also get paid decently by the establishments (even international chains such as The Hard Rock Cafe). In the US, if you are in a tipped position, you have a seperate minimum wage (mine was $2.62 when minimum wage was $5.25). It's expected that you get tipped and that is how you balance your income. If servers made $5.25/hour, it'd be a bit (but not much) different. I doubt many pizza delivery guys make more than minimum wage, if that.

Again, it's an expected part of the transaction, if you are too poor or cheap to give a tip, you should not be lazy and cook/feed/serve yourself. It makes perfect sense to me.