Im not too worried about it. Most of my life has been relatively thin years, and my needs are simple and my wants modest. I have learned to enjoy the small things in life immensely. Ironically, one of my favorite vices is to eat out, enjoy good service as though I deserve it more than anyone else who ever existed. And I tip well, so I get it, and making the servers day (hopefully) with a 25%+ tip is a fantastic intangible bonus. I go in in whatever T-shirt I happen to be wearing, jeans, a beat up baseball cap, and I get the VIP treatment, in a sort of relaxed, familiar fashion. If I ask for something extra, I am NEVER charged for it. If something is wrong, it is fixed with a smile from them and me (almost never wrong tho). I guess that you have to work in a resturant to really understand how one works, in both the 'by the book' and 'real world' styles.
Many people go out to eat just to eat in my opinion, and those people should just go to fast food or stay home. Dining out should be something entertaining, perhaps like a movie, but most people are simply too self absorbed to actually ENJOY it. Whether or not those people tip, they are just wasting their money if they dont actually enjoy the experience. But maybe I am just weird...JFK
"Many people go out to eat just to eat in my opinion, and those people should just go to fast food or stay home."
Since we have young kids we usually try to stick with the family type restaurants. But I grew up going out to eat atleast once or twice a week because my mom didn't enjoy cooking. So for us, we do go out a lot just to eat. And when you eat out as often as we do, fast food gets old fast. Plus if we don't take the kids to nicer restaurants with us when we go they'll never learn how to behave in them when they are older. The kids that misbehave the most in nicer restaurants are probably ones that rarely ever get to go to them so they don't understand the difference in a nice one as opposed to McDonald's.