As a former server myself, I tip very well for good service and even more for great service. On the nights I'd work, I found that servers could tell which tables would treat them the best, and those folks tend to get better service than the one or two problematic tables you get, like 3 women dining out on water and asking for half portions of everything. If you've got 6 tables going and people are drinking alcohol, ordering appetizers, eating steaks, a server is all over that. But for the three demanding ladies who want no ice in their water, extra lemon, a straw, and a split-checks for a bill that's puny, they tend to always get bad service because servers don't much like serving packs of hens. They eat cheap and they tip cheap about 9 times out of ten.

If a family of four with the children being kind of young go to a place that isn't so family-oriented, they will get bad service, too because servers don't want to have to babysit a table that spills stuff everywhere, is making a racket, and half the table isn't ordering anything.

If you order a steak medium well or well on a busy night out and you complain about how long the food is taking, you're a lousy customer and the server won't really give you good service for being an idiot.

My tip is dictated by service, but to an extent. If its super busy and the waiter is being left out to do a lot of work on their own, I don't blame them for that and it doesn't effect their tip. Now if a waiter is rude, late and has no good reason to be either, he/she gets nothing. I don't reward bad behavior... and the opposite is true as well. If I think the person was amazing and went out of their way to do a great job... I will not hesitate to double the tip.

I wonder how many of the pay-for-performance crowd here would object to their salary or wages being arbitrated by the hour?

If you're having an off day or an unproductive hour, which no one can deny having, should your boss (speaking for 'the customer') have the right to pay you less for that day/hour? I'm guessing most here would object, yet are quite comfortable arbitrating another's entitlements.

This is the sad legacy of rhetoric from people like Rob Ford or Harper: beat everything possible over the head with efficiency, because society should be treated like a machine for producing private wealth.