James Surowiecki has a piece on tipping for the New Yorker. In it, he says:

Waiters like tipping because it gives them the chance to distinguish themselves from the crowd and to score an occasional windfall.

Had he read comments on the Waiter Rant piece responding to the earlier New York Times op-ed on tippig, he’d know that one of the biggest reasons waiters want to preserve the institution of tipping is that they feel that it prevents their employer from pocketing a big chunk of their income.