It's a discussion worth having but it's a discussion that deserves better than Jezebel. There are a couple problems with it:

1) It's entirely possible for a server to be a gentleman. Let's say i go to Palisade in Seattle, the place I've received the best service of anywhere I've ever been. My server has eight tables and our turnover is about an hour and a half to two hours. I'm there with my girl and we're going to have 2 $25 entrees, a $30 bottle of wine and split a $9 dessert. I'm going cheap and my bill is $89 before tax - with Seattle's hospitality tax it's gonna be around $115. 25% of that is about $28. That means I'm paying that server $14 an hour and I'm one of eight tables (many of which are going to pay lots, lots more). If that server gets three nights a week and four hours at that rate, she's making $1400 a week for fifteen, sixteen hours a week - and I don't begrudge her the money. She's good at what she does. That's why she makes $8 for bringing me a $40 bottle of wine.

(or does she)

Because of course those tips also pay the busboy. They also pay the maitre'd. They also pay the dishwashers. A server has a lot of mouths to feed - it's part of tipping out and since most service establishments have gone computerized, they've also gone centralized, which has given many restaurants an opportunity to assess fees and charges on tips.

I've seen and heard accounts of 25 percent.

So there's the other shoe, which Jezebel doesn't touch on (because they can't read, because Gawker sucks, etc etc etc): that $8 you tipped the waitress at Applebee's is actually $1 for the dishwasher, $1.50 for the busboy, $3.50 for the waitress and $2 for Applebee's purely for the benevolence of putting them all in one place to fight for your scraps.

Is it illegal? Sure. But what are you going to do about it? Bitch that you're not getting what's yours? It's on their computer. Complain to the IRS? Okay, but this is Applebee's we're talking about and they've got the reserves. Meanwhile, you're an at-will employee and you're not getting a reference when they show you the door. Besides which, there's a long line of liberal arts grads who think that making $8 for serving a bloomin' onion and two budweisers to drunk fratrats isn't a bad living because they don't know it's actually $3.50 and an hour's worth of sexual harassment.

Tipping isn't the problem. Tipping as a fundamental function of compensation isn't even a problem. It's tipping as an unregulated, unaudited aspect of an industry designed to prey on the vulnerable that's the problem.

And that's why fuck Jezebel.