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Originally Posted by host
That just is not the way that it is done here, except by foreign visitors. Put yourself in my place, if you can. The average tip in my market is just above 19 percent, but I work in fine dining, the highest rated, best food, wine and service venue.
You come in, prepared to tip "up to" 15 percent, if you are completely satisfied. From the start, you're taking up 20 percent of my earning potential, in a 5 table station. You automatically are reducing my income from your table by at least 20 percent below what the average tip in our market is. (Remember...just over 19 prcent is average in this market, but this is a fine dining venue, so our average is higher.)
Not only are you not willing to learn or adapt to the local tipping custom, you are unapologetic, even obnoxious, proposing "remedies" for a "problem" that only you are the source of. If you didn't know, now you do.
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This is where the cultural difference lies. Looking at the American system from the viewpoint of the rest of the world, the problem isn't that I'm not tipping - the "problem" is a strange system where you are relying on goodwill or social compliance. It doesn't make sense to have to tip the cashier at the supermarket a percentage of your grocery bill, the pump attendant a percentage of your gas bill.
I know you're supposed to tip the bellhop who brings your luggage to your room (and I do), but if you tip them, then why not tip the builders who carried the bricks to the building site of your house? Because that cost is built into the cost of your house, of course. As far as I am concerned, tipping a bellhop is a device used to show off, to state how superior you are: "I'm so rich that I pay someone to carry my luggage for me instead of pulling my Samsonite into the lift on my own."
Hence the alternate system where the cost of being served is built into the price of the product. Does that put up prices? Sure... but the consumer would have had to pay that anyway according to the compulsory-tipping system. If you get great service, then leave a tip and it really means something. If you get bad service, then speak to the manager, or simply don't eat there again.
That having been said, whenever I have been back in the US I always tipped 15-20%. I know that the job is hard, and I appreciate the way service staff feel about poor tipping in the light of how the system works so I pay out... but I still think it's a really, really stupid system.