This topic is close to my heart. When I started working 30 years ago, my salary was barely enough to cover my rent and transport to work and back. So I was lucky enough get a 2nd job as a to waiter, which enabled me to afford things like food and toothpaste. I worked Monday to Fridays at my "day" job, and waitered evenings on Wednesday to Saturday Nights and Sundays I pulled a double shift waitering, which mean I started at 09h00 on a Sunday Morning and knocked off between 21h00 & 23h00 on a Sunday night. Sometimes I didn't wait tables, I manned the bar. Being barman for the night paid a better "basic" than waitering, but the chances of tips were way less, as few people came to the restaurant to sit at the bar. They would sit there to wait for their companions before moving to a table, or came in for one drink after work, before going home.
The "basic pay" for a waiter was nothing basically, and the most of your earnings were through tips. Now, this restaurant didn't do the "service fee will be added to the bill on tables of 6 or more" like others do these days. I cannot tell you how disheartening it is if you work on a Friday or Saturday night, and you are assigned a table of 10 or more people, and at the end of the night you get tipped nothing. You basically worked for free. Those types of tables on Friday or Saturday is your only table, and they normally run up quite a bar bill, which makes you run up and down the whole night.
Then you get customers who complain just for the sake of complaining, or to get a free or discounted meal. I cannot tell you how many times I put a meal in front of a patron that I know with 100% certainty that they ordered, just for them to say that they ordered something else. And you get the bullies. People who just find pleasure in tormenting their waiters, or someone who has a personal beef with you. Even once had a table where the guy's wife openly flirted with me and he didn't appreciate it.
And one night the Financial Manager of the company I worked for came in to pick up a take-away order and she saw me. She came up to me and asked me why I was working there. My exact words to her were "You know what my salary is, would you be able to live on it?". In the next week I was called into the GM's office and they effectively doubled my salary. Which was still a very low salary, but at least I could stop waitering.
I tip, and I tip well, because the almost two years that I waitered, wasn't the best time of my life. I think a service fee should be added to the bill, so the waiters can make a decent living.
If you don't want to pay the waiter for the service you get, then don't go and eat out at restaurants. Get takeaway instead. And remember, if the food is not up to your high standards, it is not the waiter's fault. The problem is with the kitchen or the management. If you see your entire tables's food standing there getting cold, or your drinks order takes 30 minutes to come, then you can blame your waiter.