I’ve never been to the US, and this just sounds totally absurd to me.

It is absurd, but that’s how it is. America is an absurd place based on absurd ideas held together by an absurdly oppressive government that simultaneously masquerades as absurdly free. I don’t recommend coming here for any reason other than to see family, although we do have some incredible natural wonders that are probably worth seeing.

How are you entitled to part of my food?

When you order a pizza with toppings, you are usually charged a surcharge per topping. If you have a fixed amount of money to spend, a common scenario is that you could either spend $3-5 on toppings, or give that $3-5 to the driver as a tip.

How am I responsible for your pay?

Because you decided to come to my restaurant and waste my time. Any time spent at the restaurant is time I will never get back and therefore a waste; at least make it worth my while.

Yes, the employer should be the one to compensate employees. However, this is never the case. Now you know that, if you walk into an American restaurant, you are wasting my time and that the company will not pay me for it. You know this now. I have told you, you can look up the phenomenon on the internet, you can go into any restaurant and ask any tipped employee; I dare you to show me that this isn’t the case.

If you do not pay the server, they will not be paid justly for their work. If you let go of an apple, gravity will bring it down to the ground. These facts should be on equal ground. In reality, the former is stronger; we can put a table below the apple, but Americans are not interested enough in the fate of their servers to make any changes to benefit servers.

The simple and frankly preferred solution is that if tipping is really so odious to you that you cannot factor it in your price, do not go to restaurants, particularly mine [1]. This allows me to concentrate on customers who do tip. If no one shows up, I can get my work done early and possibly use my phone, read, talk to coworkers, or do literally anything else, particularly those activities a reasonable human would actually like to do.

It’s not meant as personal offence, more of a general statement.

I get it, but I do feel like I need to be stern here. People don’t really consider restaurant employees because for those who have never worked in one, it’s just a happy place associated with good memories, and those who speak ill of their work experience at a restaurant are just trying to attack a “good thing”. The sad truth of the matter is that a restaurant is, in addition to being a social place where memories are made, a workplace where people waste their time and live real lives.

IMO, because comfortable life under capitalism is contingent on a worker’s productive output above all else, places that have a dual work/social purpose should be understood as workplaces above all else. It makes for a miserable analysis where all facets of life are merely instrument of profit generation, where the human experience is a side effect of particular methods of making money. However, America is a miserable place and has well earned such a dressing-down.

[1] At the moment, this is hypothetical as I don’t work in food service anymore (and never will; I would literally rather die or die horribly), but this was the answer I would have given (and did give) during the time I worked as a pizza delivery driver. (At least where I worked, delivery drivers cooked fried food, did prep in the back of house, sliced finished pizzas, and took orders when in the store; basically anything but building pizzas, which requires extra training to the company’s spec.)