Well since I worked for a restaurant chain for 15 years, I'd like to chime in here...
Last week my wife and I went to Texas Roadhouse for our anniversary dinner..
We Both got 12 ounce filet mignon dinners(got them butterflied so we could each eat half and take the other half home for the next day) and a rack of ribs to split... We also got a full rack of ribs to take home... I got a Pepsi and my wife got a water...
Our waitress was probably 18 or 19 and she was ok, nothing special.. She brought us out drinks and then brought us our food, asked if we needed anything else and then brought us our to-go order and our check... the total was $96 and change.. I gave her a $100 bill and a $20 and told her to keep the change because there wasn't much difference between $20 and $23.. She didn't even say thank you..
We were only there 30 minutes and this girl made $23 just from us.. Now did she deserve a better tip than the waitress who was right next to us waiting on a party of 4 just because we got more expensive items..? And mind you the to-go order was prepared and packed up by the cooks..
It is very dificult to justify how much you should really tip a waitress... IMO their tip should be based off of the amount of work rather than the total of the bill...
Now as far as working with a server, my biggest gripe was always this attitude from them.. "I don't get paid to do that." But yet they use your establishment to make their tips, but they don't want to actually be a part of it...
I've worked with 1000's and 1000's of different waitresses(and some male servers) all over Pa, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia and I'd 99% of them were only there for themselves... I used to always preach "Het Ladies, this is supposed to be all for one and one for all, not everyman for themselves"
I worked 50+ hours a week(salary of course) and when I quit I was making 40k a year.. There were waitresses that were pulling $700 to $800 a week and reporting $250 to $300 and everything always worked out for them as far as their paychecks went. The real people in the restaurant industry that bust their ass and don't make shit are the people nehind the scenes, not the waitressses.
Christ, we had college girl come home for summer break and were pulling $400 over the weekend. And some of them were the laziest people you could imagine... Every monday morning we would go through their tip reports and you would be shocked to see what some of them reported..
Talk about the biggest tax cheats in the country...