Good read: How NYC has struggled with the ‘no tipping’ model over the last few years. It clarifies why this is such a difficult issue for states that don’t yet have a “fair wage” law like Oregon and CA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/nyregion/the-misadventures-of-an-idealistic-restaurant-in-a-cut-throat-city.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=New%20York
It’s always going to be a tricky subject when tipping seems to be so deeply embedded in American society - not just in restaurants.
As a European, living in Europe, but visiting America on holiday every couple of years or so, I look at your restaurant practices with both amazement and despair. It’s a contributing factor to why I often say that America is the most “foreign” place I visit, regardless of the fact that we speak the same language (broadly speaking).
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Off topic: At times, I couldn’t make out a word of what Jamie Carragher said.
I also struggle with some Merseyside accents which is, perhaps, odd as I live only 35 miles or so from Liverpool.
On the other hand, it is only in very recent years that my own accent has been generally recognised in America as being British. When we started to visit (first visit in 1980), we were regularly asked if we were from New Zealand. Or, similarly, I recall us being in a restaurant in Blowing Rock, NC, in 2013, where my partner really struggled to understand the server’s very heavy accent and I virtually had to translate.
