I know what it’s like to receive tips in a job. It’s great. It’s that little or a lot extra. I also know what it’s like to not be given a tip when you expected one. Not a good feeling.

I stopped accepting tips from massage clients. I told them I charged a fair price that compensated me adequately for my services. I told them the best tips they could give me were rebooking and recommending me to friends.

At this same time I started tipping a little less. I stopped tipping my hair dresser. I never tipped my current massage therapist. I don’t tip counter help in any restaurant setting.

I would love to never leave a tip again. And I could do that. It is a choice after all. Tips are only mandatory when a restaurant posts they will automatically add a tip for certain size parties.

I understand plenty of restaurants—which is where most of my tipping occurs—don’t pay people much money. Or at least that is what we are told. I don’t know this for a fact.

What if menu prices reflected paying people a decent wage? A number of restaurants in the Bay Area and in bigger cities are doing just that. A coffee shop in San Francisco that opened this fall pays baristas $30 an hour. Tips not allowed. (The City’s minimum wage is $19.18/hour.) Bitters in Chico does not take tips.

We need more of this.

What about when dinner for two is $130, with $30 of that being two glasses of wine? That 20 percent tip gets more expensive. But it takes no more effort to bring two glasses of wine than it does two glasses of water, soda, coffee or some other beverage.

Should the server be compensated less when I order something cheap compared to when a high ticket item is on the bill?

Clearly, the percentage system is one thing that is wrong with the tipping industry.

I used to live in Wine Country. Never would have thought of tipping for a tasting then. Now it’s a thing. It’s a thing I don’t like and have a hard time doing.

Tipping hasn’t always been the norm in the United States. According to an article on 7 Shifts: “Tips were left in European taverns to ensure quick and good service. Wealthy Americans discovered it for themselves in the 1850s and 1860s while traveling in Europe. Tipping in Europe was born in the middle ages, a master-serf custom where servants would receive an extra gratuity for excellent performance. American travelers brought it back to the States as a way to feel aristocratic. But tipping did not take off immediately in the U.S. There was a high level of resistance to it, and tipping was deemed ‘un-American’. Eating out was already expensive, so why would struggling Americans have to pay more on top of the bill? It also seemed to enforce classist tendencies, where the upper class left a small gratuity for those in the lower classes that worked in the service industry.”

Now tipping is the norm in the U.S., and a rarity in Europe. I prefer today’s European practices.

I don’t want to tip my tennis pro at tennis camp next year. I don’t want to tip any driver. I don’t want to tip housekeeping at hotels. Clearly, I don’t want to tip the wait staff either.

I want to tip people who do something extra for me. It’s a thank you from me to them. It’s acknowledging they did something other than just doing their job. I like tipping the person who delivers pizza to my door.

I also had no problem tipping at Sierra Nevada Brewery the other day as I was doing some shopping, trying to figure out which beers to buy as a gift. The workers were accommodating with the tiny pours as I figured it out. I felt like they were doing me a favor; it wasn’t just a standard flight I was asking for. The tip was my thank you.

My tipping is going to be less often going forward. It’s going to be a thank you, not a societal mandate.