Complex arguments for simple stupid things

One of the things that is strange to me in US is how much people here try to justify the actual situation instead of trying to change it. Some time they have excellent creativity to provide complex arguments for simple stupid things. But the problem is that after a while they themselves believe their own rhetoric.

One of the stupid things is how they calculate salary of waiters. In US restaurant owners do not pay completely their employers’ salary for those who work as waiter. And every client is obliged to pay them separately as part of their own bill. Americans name this part of the bill, “tips” but this is not really a tip. Tip is “a gift of money, over and above payment due for service; something given without claim or demand.” The funny part of this story is to know how they justify this stupid custom.

The first argument that they use, is that this system of payment forces the waiter to be nicer to the clients in order to get larger tips. But I see some scientific studies that show there is no meaningful relation between the amount of tip that they gained as part of their salary and their behavior. On the other hand the studies show that amount of tips depends on the general services of any restaurant and in that process waiters are small role. why do we link the salary of waiters to a process that he or she has no control over? and also why don't we calculate part of the chef’s work or restaurant owner’s equity in tips? It means that if we want to stay coherent in this argument, all services should be included in the tip system except for the unprepared food.

The second argument is that tips help the people that have small salaries such as waiter. Really? the minimum wage in US is about 8 dollar per hour but do you know that minimum wage for waiters is 3.5 dollar? Do you know why? Because restaurant owners say that the reason tips are part of the salary, means it decreases the fixed part of salary. Even the government taxes tips! This means that the tip system just helps the restaurant owner to have cheap workers.

Tip systems have other benefits for restaurant owners that is misleading to the client. Unconsciously even if you are accustomed with this stupid tipping system when you estimate the price of the meal, you forget that the tip could raise the price by factor 20 percent.

The problem is that we can not do any thing individually against this system. If we don't pay the tip we punish the waiter. If we pay the tip we perpetuate the system that uses waiters as cheap workers.