Final table "bubble-fund"

[Brocktoon]

I played a tournament in a Casino (Taj) for the first time today and it paid the top 9 spots out of 80 or so players. They consolidate to a final table of 10 meaning that the first person out from the final table gets nothing.

To ease the pain of bubbling at the final table all 10 of us put up $10 all of which would go to the 10th place finisher.

I'm sure this is common and I was more than happy to throw in my $10 since I was 9th in chips and desperately short. However, had I been a huge stack looking around at a handful of "red-zone" stacks I wouldn't have wanted to essentially throw away $10 to the bubble boy.

Obviously the big stacks are giving up a ton of value here, basically they are handing a stranger $10 in a tourny where the buy-in was only $65 to begin with.

Maybe I'm being overly nitty, but if I were in the same situation again as a chipleader I don't think I'd throw in any money. Is this bad ettiquette? Am I wrong here?

***On a related note: How much am I expected to tip the dealers when they take $15 of my buy-in for the house, about 25% of the total prize pool (50+15). Shouldn't some of this money be going to the dealers? I feel some sort of gratuity should be built into the buy-in when the house take is such a huge percentage of the buy-in. What's a "normal" tip when you win a couple of hundred dollars in a small live tourny anyway? I had no idea and no one seemed to offer much of a suggestion at the time so I tipped what I consider to be a small amount.