Splitting tips at bars and restaurants is unfair and exhausting to both, servers/bartenders and customers.

[traveller]

It happens so much more often than you think. You get served by your favorite server or bartender at a bar or restaurant. Her service is excellent, or maybe she even took you to a local arcade for your birthday, or let's say she recently took you to the local county fair. And let's say the week after, you go visit her, get served by her, and you tip her $30 because her service was great and you had a great fun time with her at the fair.

But then you're told that she only kept $10 of the $30 you gave her as a tip, and the other $20 went to two default ice barrier toting stranger bartenders, one of whom might even be some unattractive, 300-pound turnoff, the other one some anti-social that only interacts for business reasons and whose interactions with others are strictly for business only. It's no wonder you feel so disappointed. Why can't your favorite bartender who took you to the fair keep the entire $30? Why does it have to be split and portions of it given to some default ice barrier toting strangers? It's so unfair. Splitting tips is actually a good way to lose great servers and bartenders, followed by the absence of many regulars who stop going to that bar or restaurant because their favorite bartender or server no longer works there anymore. Splitting tips is very unfair to servers/bartenders and their regulars that go visit them all the time.

Bartenders and servers at bars and restaurants ought to be able to keep every dollar of every tip they get from their customers. It's good, however, to record how much a certain bartender gets in tips as it would show the place, this server or bartender is loved a lot more than that one, and then bartenders and servers that are loved by their customers end up staying many years, possibly even a decade or two, while stranger bartenders and servers and their default ice barriers might last only months, or even weeks in some cases.

Even in Florida, breaking the ice with strangers is not an easy thing to do.