Tippy galore

Today I confirm every waiter's belief of lesbians: I hate tipping.

Nonetheless, I have never avoided tipping altogether. This is because of the nasty little rules for restaurant workers. By law, their minimum pay is lower than the hourly cash grossed by the rest of the poor slobs who work for minimum wage.

So I can't bring myself to leave absolutely nothing. Given industry pay averages, and without tips, a waiter could afford a nice, empty refrigerator carton as a home. (Stack a few together and you could create a charming little shanty town, where resto managers could pop by and offer day jobs to a select few.)

Tipping used to be a reward for a job above and beyond the call of duty. Now it's a requirement.

In Quebec, where I live, the tax department demands an accounting of food receipts and calculates an automatic percentage of tipping revenue. Servers must hand over the cash regardless of whether they actually got that much money from each table.

So avoid leaving a decent tip and the waiter is actually losing money by serving you. Quite the catch-22.

The scheme was instituted because so many waiters were believed to be concealing tipping income. (Note to politicians: people cheat on their taxes because they don't believe you deserve all that money. All we see are politicians with their monster expense accounts and "fact-finding" trips to Jamaica's five-star hotels to avoid the winters, and piggy civil servants steering millions of dollars in contracts to friends in exchange for kickbacks; run government better and you'll instill a sense of civics in the populace.)

So tipping is just a cash grab by the state. But it's also become an institutionalized subsidy to restaurant owners. They can pay out less money and the customer tops up the salaries. Not because the consumer had a lovely time and thinks the cash is deserved, but because she feels obligated.

I resent the whole damned scam. Quite simply, tipping should be banned.