Don’t tell me how much to tip in a restaurant (opinion)

I’m all for helping restaurant owners and workers, especially as the dining industry continues to recover from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just don’t tell me how much to tip. And don’t include a mandatory tip amount on my bill.

But that’s what’s starting to happen in some restaurants. The New York Post reported that some eateries are including mandatory 18% to 20% tips on customer bills.

Listen, I’ll decide how much I tip the server. And, by the way, it might actually be more than that mandatory percentage.

I like to think that I’m a reasonably generous tipper, especially if it’s a place I go to on a somewhat regular basis. But even if not, I don’t think I’m cheap when it comes to tipping.

People who work in restaurants or bars work hard. They can put up with a lot of nonsense, from insensitive bosses and entitled customers to surly co-workers.

Never mind the long hours and the fact that a lot of them have to work on holidays like Easter, Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving. Holiday dining seems to bring out the worst in customers, I’ve been told.

If a restaurant or bar server has been particularly good to me, I’ll ask them if they want me to leave cash on the table for them instead of including it on the charge when the bill is rung up. That’s to make sure that they get the tip that they deserve instead of having to share it with the rest of the staff.

I know that circumvents the practice of pooling all the tips and then parsing them out, but as one bartender in a downtown Manhattan cocktail bar told me recently, “Cash in king.” She was happy to get the tip she deserved.

That’s the way it should work.

And, listen, even if I receive subpar service or food that’s not so great, I still leave a tip. It may not be an overly generous tip, but it’s not nothing.

So I don’t need anyone telling me how much I should tip. I get that people rely on those dollars.

But this seems to be where the dining industry is going. They’re rightly or…