Do you or have you ever had to survive on tips?

I've only ever had one situation like that and it was my second job. Honestly people were pretty generous for delivering sandwiches to them. Especially the partiers and inebriated.

But it pains me to say I am a terrible tipper. I just have a hard time reading a situation in which I am expected to tip. Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, and like today, not at all. I felt bad after leaving. After all, they are most likely trying to live on these tips.

So what are your experiences on tipping. Both working for tips or being the tipper, any input?

I hate tipping and I hope it goes away. They make it obnoxious to not tip by adding an extra button. I've seen 10%, 15%, 20%, and "other", where you can put 0 or whatever. Seriously, how about a "no tip" button. I get it when it comes to sit-down restaurants but not places like Subway. They should throw those corporate goons in prison with Jared.

I wouldn't say I "survived" off tips, but it was certainly a nice bonus to my regular, measly pay when I was working as a cook in college.

There was an interesting dynamic where the servers would split their tips: better servers got their food on time, or their requests met properly; worse servers (those that were jerks, were bad at their job, etc) got orders late or too fast, didn't get their special requests met.

There was a hierarchy between front and back of the house and long story short good servers got good tips and knew to split them fairly with the cooks in the back if they wanted to keep getting good tips. Don't piss off the cooks.

Yeah, despite benefitting from them a lot during my cooking and catering years, I really didn't like the idea of depending on them.

The system needs to change though, people needs tips in the US. Restaurant work isn't seen as a serious profession for the most part.

I do a side gig (DoorDash/Uber Eats & shopping) and let me tell you something, I don't expect tips at all and for those who do give me a tip, thank you. Sure, it's a nice bonus money but I do nor anyone should have to depend on tips just to survive.

The main issue is most companies that use tipping systems are taking like 30%, or 40% out of pay to the hard workers and the corporate greedy fools think their workers can make do for those that tip but the truth is, they think everyone tips but they don't. Taking a higher percentage out of the pay is the real problem and as @SOedipus said, the tips need to go and stop taking away a higher percentage of hard-ass workers.

I've never worked for tips but have had a tech support job where my employers suddenly decided to tie bonuses to sales, of all things. I refused to sell stuff to people who didn't need it, so no more bonuses. Ended up spending a lot of my time instead getting existing customers off unnecessary products and services they'd been dumped with by some sycophantic twat after a measley commission.

As a customer, I don't enjoy artificial hospitality behaviours and don't think we should need to reward them in order for some poor **** to get reasonable compensation for their time and work.

Nope. I also never tip.

I've never had a job where I received many tips, but I do tip well, especially if the person I tipped did a good job and was friendly. When I get my hair cut I usually tip 20 percent or more because it feels like the right thing to do, and makes their day. Usually around 15 percent at a nice restaurant.