Here's a scene that apparently played out in San Francisco recently: A diner sits down at a Michelin-starred restaurant — the kind of place where entrees cost more than your monthly MUNI pass — and proceeds to get absolutely ghosted by their server. Fifteen minutes to take the order. Another 20 minutes sitting with an empty water glass and zero check-ins. At a restaurant that has literally been recognized for excellence.

The diner's dilemma: do you still tip 15%? 20%? Do you tip at all?

Let's be honest about what's happening here. San Francisco's tipping culture has quietly morphed from "a reward for good service" into "a mandatory surcharge you're socially shamed into paying regardless of what you actually received." And that's before we get into the SF restaurants already tacking on mandatory service charges, health mandates, and whatever other line items they've dreamed up to pad the bill.

One local put it bluntly: "Tipping is for the service, not the food. When service sucks, it should not be generously rewarded. When I sold shoes, no one tipped me. When you buy groceries, no one tips the cashier."

That's not a heartless take. That's just how incentives are supposed to work. You deliver great service, you get rewarded. You vanish for 20 minutes at a Michelin-starred restaurant — a place whose entire brand is the experience — and yeah, the tip should reflect that.

Another Bay Area resident offered a more diplomatic approach: talk to your server, flag a manager, give them a chance to make it right. A Michelin-starred establishment "should care about your experience and would want it to be flawless. People talk a lot about bad dining experiences, and Michelin-star establishments don't want that kind of lore out on the sidewalk."

Fair enough. But here's what bothers us: the expectation in this city that consumers should subsidize bad labor management. If a restaurant can't staff properly or train its servers to check on a table, that's a management problem — not something diners should paper over with a guilt tip.

SF restaurants already operate in one of the most expensive labor markets in the country. Servers here earn some of the highest base wages nationally. The idea that a 20% tip is non-negotiable — even when the experience is objectively poor — isn't generosity. It's a shakedown with a smile.

Tip what the service deserves. That's not cruelty. That's accountability.