I worked at a country club for 10 years where no one left tips because a 15% gratuity was added to all bills. That 15% was split between all waiters/waitresses, bartenders, barbacks. etc. By the time they got done with it it was split between 20 people so we got crapola in tips added to our checks.
The only thing that kept me alive was banquets, lots and lots of banquets where I made excellent money in cash tips. If I couldn’t have worked them I would have quit.
I feel for the little people on the bottom end of the scale. A favorite trick of mine is to leave very little as a tip on the credit card (usually rounding up to the nearest dollar) and an actual cash tip on the table.
But I think the better solution is to do what they do in Japan: Pay their people a decent wage and not expect the customers to subidize management which they are already paying for the meal. If it means an increase in the price of the meal, then so be it.
Worked at a car detail shop where everyone split the tips. After a while, communism mentality set in. If someone gets the same amount no matter what, why do your best.
I tended bar part time for a number of years at a Japanese owned country club at which very little cash changed hands because most members signed their house charges and wrote on a tip. Almost all of them tipped quite well. Some of the guys coming in after a round of golf would pay cash for drinks or pitchers of beer, probably so they wouldn't get flack from the missus about their bar bill. But most signed their charges and tipped on them.
When about to open after the winter closure one year, we were called to a meeting. We were told that everyone would be getting a big raise in wages, but now a 17% service charge would be added to the checks and members would be instructed not to tip. I checked my prior year's tip log and realized that I would be making about one third less than before.
The members assumed the 17% went to the individuals who had served them, when in fact it went to the house. When I began to inform the members that was the case, some of them started to pay cash for their bar bills. Long story short, I became a troublemaker in management's eyes, and was eventually terminated when they discovered that I had written out the tip situation and posted it at the bar in place of the NO TIPPING signs.