Laura, certainly uncomfortable and unfortunate. Going out to dinner to me is to relax and enjoy the evening, not to be confrontational. That can ruin even a nice meal.
My note on servers making the statements that they don't get part of the tip, or the bold "is that all you are going to tip", is that I would guess that often the owner doesn't know. It is a server tactic and not an owner tactic I tend to think, so I have a tough time punishing the owner. This happened to us on our last trip where we know the owner very well and so I brought it to the owners attention and the owner was a bit shocked and immediately stated that all the staff share in the tips. How this was or was not dealt with I have no idea. I also get that most don't want to go to the owner or manager and make that kind of comment, again uncomfortable but if you don't you can't expect them to know about it. I know in my business if we see a single issue with a customer service error we address it to everybody as soon as possible, doing our best not to pick the one person out but make it known that we don't do that.
Tipping should not be a stress. I keep my personal standard with tipping simple, and then it is a simple issue to deal with.
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