Originally the point of giving TIPS was To Insure Prompt Service. It still is, though the waiter doesn't know how his work will be graded until his test is over.

For years there has been talk about getting rid of tipping. American Express would like to see the service charge included in the check as it is in Europe. The trouble is hardly anyone in the United States wants to ditch the custom; not the restaurant management, not the guests, and, almost universally, not the waiters themselves.

At first blush you would think a wait staff would leap at the opportunity to receive a guaranteed salary ­ and medical benefits and paid vacations ­ instead of relying on tips, but this is not at all the case.

The Quilted Giraffe was not a restaurant where anyone would normally stick his neck out, nevertheless it was the only place in New York City that successfully instituted the practice of including the gratuity in the cost of the meal. Its owner, Barry Wine, also created Beggar's Purses, a signature appetizer of caviar filled crêpe "purses" without making any obvious connection between waiters and "beggars." His citadel to haute gastronomy with its astronomical prices is no longer in business, but the role of tips seems to have played no part in determining on which side the bread was most generously buttered.

Basically, there is little motivation for a waiter to take those extra steps to pleasure the guests at his station if his tips are pooled among the entire staff in the back and the front of the house. Why should he pick up the work of a colleague if a lazy worker ends up with the same take-home pay as an energetic and solicitous one?

Team players many waiters are not. More often they are solo entrepreneurs who can expect to reap an immediate reward for a job well done. His hourly wage may be as little as $2, but a great waiter in a ritzy restaurant can earn upwards of $800 a week and be proudly responsible for declaring this bounty to the IRS.

In an industry with a notoriously high rate of turnover, management, on the whole, is happier with the status quo than in investing in job training and taking on the additional expense of paying benefits. Besides owners fear that if extra costs were added to the check at the end of the meal, the public would recoil at the total. As it is, the news is received incrementally.

As for guests, determining the gratuity makes them feel in charge of the evening because the generosity or paucity of the tip is entirely writ with their pens. The host gives or withholds the tip in what is perhaps the last vestige of master and servant noblesse that obliges only if the waiter exhibits the correct balance of civility and servility. It's surprising the custom has lasted so long because waiting with, or for, a hand out is basically incompatible with the American view of democracy. If change is in the offing, however, it looks as though it is still far too early to begin counting it.