'Tipping is Un American. Keep your change.'

My interest was piqued as well, so I found this on the internet...it seemed the best answer, and seemed most logical. Like anything on the net, it may be all or partially wrong, so take it with a grain of salt if you like:

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"There was an active anti-tipping movement in the U.S. in the early 20th century. James Surowiecki mentioned it in an article about tipping in the New Yorker:


William R. Scott, in his 1916 polemic “The Itching Palm,” described the tip as the price that “one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority”; Gunton’s Magazine labelled the custom “offensively un-American,” arguing that workers here should seek honest wages “instead of fawning for favors.” The anti-tipping campaigns were so effective that six states actually banned the practice.
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Now, of course, in what was possibly yet another allowance to business owners (assuming wait staffs did once make enough of a salary to live on. I don't know if they ever did, but if people didn't think tipping was necessary maybe they were paid a living wage...) eatery owners are allowed to pay waiters and waitresses sub-minimum wages, with the understanding tips will make up any shortfalls.

I take no major issue with the way tips work - FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY PROVIDE THE SERVICE. Actual waiters and waitresses have to become very good at their jobs in order to thrive. It's a skill, IMHO. But this stuff with counterpersons requesting tips when I'm travelling to the establishment, walking right up to the counter, and bringing it home to eat, I do not believe in, and generally do not feel any pressure to tip. If they don't make enough money, I can sympathize, but that's an issue for them to take up with their employer. To me, THAT'S un-American, if anything is.

I'm not trying to Mr. Pink you, counterpersons, but tipping for walk-up takeout is basically just asking me to pay extra for my food.

"How do you feel?"
"Like the Kling-Klang King of the Rim-Ram Room!"

I thought the sign odd too, and later Betty Davis's character makes a direct reference to the sign. It did seem that she thought a tip was kind of patronizing, and early on one of those guys buying a meal literally throws a coin at her. We don't have the minimum wage law yet and perhaps working people felt they had to make their own way? On the other hand, I do remember that a trucker in "The Grapes of Wrath" leaves a large tip at a restaurant counter after seeing that one of the Joads could not afford the little kid some candy. The waitress did not think it wrong even given she knew what it was left for.

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