First of all - that is extremely inflammatory and wrong - the woman "pastor" was just showing her selfishness.
Second - waiters/waitresses typically get paid at such places somewhere between $2.50-3.50 per hour and do count on tips to make up the difference (after often having to split their tips with bussboys, bartenders, and fellow servers).
I personally despise automatic gratuities - it takes away a lot of the incentive to provide good service out of the equation. When I receive good service - I often tip more than what an automatic gratuity would bring. But I leave nothing extra when I see 18% added regardless of the service. Maybe this is wrong-minded, but what exactly is a "tip" suppose to be?
Good servers work their tails off, and deserve to take home a reasonable paycheck - poor servers need to find another line of work. If tips are mandatory, where it the incentive?
In Taiwan the tips are included with most services with an option to leave more if desired. In fact, I was in a restaurant in Taipei when my drunk coworker tipped a young woman about $70 US for a meal of about $100, she almost fainted.
Then the @sshole employer should pay them what they are worth.
Instead they get to advertize that $2.99 steak sandwich and make their profit by stealing the wage of the server and getting the suckers who go in to take advantage of the bargain prices, only to discover that they must pay a toll to the server.
You don't like the pay take it up with the employer. Good luck getting him to raise his price in order to pay you a living wage.