Two more restaurants in Toronto just got rid of tipping

No, they did not. It is more accurate to say two restaurants in Toronto just mandated 18% tipping:

>Tips will still be split between front and back but Ten will now be "adding a flat untaxed 18 per cent service charge onto each bill no matter the size of the group,"

The more sensible thing would have been to increase menu prices by 18%. But they are not being sensible. They just increased their prices while pretending they have not done so. I hate it when you have to treat a menu like a legal document and be looking for the fine print.

I'm so happy to hear this. I cannot stand tipping and genuinely get anxiety when I'm out with friends and the wife and she sometimes pays without knowing what the right "tip amount" is.

It happens to me too, where I have to pay attention to what the waiter/waitress is doing that is exceptional or bad so I can adjust my tip accordingly.

It's bad for the customer and the employee, the employer is the only one winning by exploiting its own workers. I wish we would just pay our servers a living wage with health benefits and stop hiding those as "Extra surchages" as San Francisco is doing.

While we're at it, show me the final price with taxes included please.

Give me the price up front, including cost for the staff to get whatever is determined to be a decent wage. At the same time, pay staff a decent wage.

As someone from India, I never understood the the tipping culture when I went abroad. It is not that tips are non-existent in India. It is not mandatory in India. However in UK, any tip I was surprised even getting a simple haircut had to be tipped in UK. I do not mind if the appropriate tip amount is factored in the price itself. The guilty-feeling and ambiguity whether I am being miserly or not made me avoid such places whenever possible.

Note: I learnt later that waiters in an restaurant are not that well paid and they have to "earn" it via tips.

I hate the idea of tipping. I tip generously. Both of these statements are simultaneously true.

The vast majority of the countries in the world (that I've visited) do not believe in percentage based tipping as we do in North America [1]. A tip either involves rounding up to the nearest unit of currency, or takes the form of a small service fee added to the bill.

In North America, we've arrived at a situation where waitstaff actually prefer a tipped environment (due to high upside potential, especially where alcohol is served) and are also beholden to the tip (due to huge downside potential i.e. laws that mandate a lowered minimum wage for tipped workers).

Getting rid of tipping by instituting a living wage can sometimes result in lower upside, so many workers end up being against a fixed livable wage. The calculation is that stochastic/high upsides (at bars, large groups) is preferable to stable but middling upside (i.e. living wage).

On the other hand, the laws of supply and demand still apply. Without high food prices and corresponding demand at those prices, a restaurant can't sustain an untipped staff. So getting rid of tipping is a gamble and not many restaurants, especially low end ones, are able to swing it. Restaurants that are looking to get rid of tips are banking on the fact that the demand will remain the same at higher sticker prices (which in theory, should be true since the effective prices have not changed -- culturally a 15-20% tip is almost mandatory) but psychologically this often isn't the case -- unless you have a sign at the door that says (no tips required).

It's a little bit like Uber/Lyft. The economics doesn't actually work out, but there's something propping it up. In the restaurant world, it's tipping. Getting rid of it is like getting rid of VC money for gig companies. There's a tightrope you have to walk to balance the books.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity