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I have never tipped in a restaurant, but I don't live in the USA. People should be paid fully by their employers and not have to hope or even beg for charity from the people they are serving, who are given a fixed estimate to pay beforehand.

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In the United States people are gived a fixed estimate, 15-20% on top of the cost of the meal. Why is that so hard to understand?

If you have never tipped in an American restaurant you are an ethnocentric douche bag who doesn't deserve to travel overseas.

Again, sorry if I'm a little jaded but during SXSW, Austin is filled with European hipsters who continually screw my servers to the point that I end buying tons of alcohol to compensate for all the douche bags

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I have worked as a waiter and ran upscale restaurants in Australia, and I personally believe that you are full of it. In one place I ran the average table size at lunch was 8. We used to get tables of 35-40 people that needed to be turned completely over in 90 minutes. I had nights where we did 100 covers in two wait-staff and one barman, and we pulled it off. And I never got a single tip. Because that's not how it works in Australia, you pay the staff a decent wage, especially if you want to keep them. So what makes the USA so special? Why is so hard for you guys to pay wages? It's not, you could easily factor it in, you don't have extra special magical hidden costs that don't exist in other parts of the world. You put the onus on the customer to determine how much your staff get paid. Well, I don't like going out and having to determine that. It's an uncomfortable position to be in. Give me the bill and I'll pay the bill. But why the hell should I have to decide on your in-house staff payment policies every time I go to get a meal?

And speaking of doucebags who travel overseas, why is it that Americans who come into our restaurants don't tip? I mean, you're so used to doing it home it should be second nature, right?