nate:
BlueShift:
I'd be interested to hear from any employers, especially hospo types like @nate on their views.
As an employer, I'd love tipping. If I took out the wages component of my overheads and just paid my staff a bare minimum (I'm sure in some states in the US, it's $2.50/hour) I'd happily pocket the extra profit.
Would I want it here? Not really.
If I want good staff, I have to pay them well and create an environment that they want to work in. We have a tipping jar (which I have detested since the beginning) and once a week all the staff split them. It's normally a nominal amount, but they're pretty happy with it.
Just thinking this through..
Your business has to account for the costs of the employee, this is done by way of product cost.
Product X costs $Y, a portion of which covers the employees wages.
If tipping was to become "the norm" in that industry, there would have to be a significant decrease in the prices of those products to account for the customer now having to tip. It would be interesting to see what difference it'd make to product prices (as people have pointed out, it'll mainly effect food/drink industry) and to a businesses overall return.
My guess is it probably works out in the businesses favor, rather than the employee, unless you worked in a high class restaurant or something. The tips would (in theory) be bigger, but the wait staff would likely be paid the same as a not-so-fancy place.