US tap water is horrific - and you certainly do want to drink bottled water
I agree.
The waiting staff are paid to do their job; they do it; if a customer is particularly pleased by an extra effort made, or by the food quality, or even by the cleanliness of the toilets, he may feel like saying thank you in the form of a tip. Simples.
Yes, that's fair, but it's not an 'extra' tip, it's merely 'optional'.
In general, I tend to quote those I am replying to, otherwise a post is an open comment.
No worries.
Plus, the smiley tongue out emoticon was supposed to show it was light hearted.
In my recent (couple of years) role as a ski instructor, I've been given tips only by Americans and one Russian. Other groups have bought lunch for me, or an apres-ski beer, which is equally nice, if not nicer. But I find the whole idea of being tipped a little uncomfortable, especially when the person giving the tip is very much less well-off than the one being tipped
I want tap water because I don't believe in the "worth" of a premium bottle of bottled water (yes, tight), nor the wastage that goes with the whole con of bottled water (moral stand point).
So yes, money is involved, but it isn't only that. But you are still young, so you wouldn't understand.
But thats fine, as long as you expect to pay for your tap water, for the service and use of glass and or jug it comes in.
You are old, so you should be wise enough to that by now.
If you go to a diner around Detroit, they will ask you to leave if you do not purchase anything. Some even hang signs that say there is a 2 dollar minimum over a 2 hour period of time. If you share food, ordered from 1 single plate, they will charge you a plate and silverware charge.
The point you are focusing in on, is not that the company had to pay for something, and are in your ideology losing anything. But the fact is, froma business standpoint, a restaurant is there to make money. Public parks have benches that you can sit on as long as you like. A restaurant is paying rent. And in Zurich the prices are sickeningly high. So say a restaurant that pays 10,000 CHF for an area that will allow 20 customers at the max to be served. If they are open 6 days a week, so let's say about 24 days open in the month. If each service, lunch being about 2 strong hours, and evening from 7 until 10 for food, you have about 5 hours a day to be selling to the maximum amount of people possible. That is 120 hours of the height of competitive business, for 10,000 CHF a month, and then the opposing labor, and utility costs as well.
So it costs 83.3333333333 CHF per hour to be open, and 4.16666666667 per person, per hour, to sit there. If you sit there, and do your best, to get as much possible for "free", you are occupying a seat that could be full with someone ordering a bottle of water, a beer, and so on.
Alcohol and beverages make up to between 60 and 70% of total profit. Sometimes kitchens do so poorly, in competitive markets, they are only really operating to make the alcohol sales. If you order a plate of chicken and with potatoes and greens, and they make a 1% profit from that, which is often the margins here in Switzerland, then you subtracting 70% from the bill thereafter does not make for much of a reason for the service of a restaurant to even exist there.
In the US, there is a lot of R&D put into how people sit down, eat, and leave in restaurants and bars. The chairs at Rio Bravo Cantina/Chevy's are designed in a way, to be comfortable only long enough to where people get uncomfortable, and feel the natural desire to get up and leave by 45 minutes at the maximum. That allows the restaurant to flip it's service ever hour. So a building that can seat 200 customers, will try to actually sell food to about 800 people in one service.
Now the "free" maintenance costs involved in giving you that "free" water.
Water from the tap in Switzerland is cheap. Much of it is even better then most bottled waters, as itself, except in some heavily populated areas like Zurich, is coming from sources as well. That being said, let me explain to you how beverages are distributed here. The choice of what beer or soda drink you get, normally, has little to do with the choice of the restaurant owner or bar manager.
All these places now are under contracts with the beverage suppliers. Contracts that normally last about 5 years, longer then the life expectancy of most places that open here. In it, the chairs you are sitting on, the sun umbrellas outside, the tables, the advertising signs, are all paid for by the brewers. When you get an espresso, the cup is paid for, the machine Cimballi for example, the pop fountain system, the bar sinks, the beer taps, the Co2, hoses, everything is provided by them. But it is at a premium. They have to take their products, and if they increase the prices, you cannot go anywhere else and substitute products. You have to sell certain quotas, and if you don't they start to ask money back on their investment.
When you drink from a glass of water from the sink, you are actually causing a negative charge to the owner. As, in effect, the table you are using, is rented, and the glass as well, from the brewer.
Dish machines are expensive to repair, the chemicals that are used are expensive, glasses break all the time in restaurants. I have worked in places where when inventory was done month to month, they had been breaking an average of 70 wine glasses, and 50 water glasses per day, in a restaurant with a 130 seating capacity.
I honestly could give you a ton more facts, but, you should see the point here. Also, I am not going to out fact Wolli.