Quote Originally Posted by anna_66
Well I couldn't really find 'when' the practice started, but I did find out some stuff I didn't know while doing the search like where they don't tip, who to tip, and how much to tip...very interesting!

Tip-Wikiedia

That was a very interesting article.

Quotes-

The word originates from the 16th century verb tip, which meant "to give unexpectedly"

In some jurisdictions, tipped workers qualify for a lower statutory minimum wage from the employer, and therefore may supplement deficient pay with tips. For example, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires restaurant employers to ensure that the total tip income reported to them during any pay period is at least eight percent of their total receipts for that period. If the reported total is below eight percent, employers must allocate as income the difference between the actual tip income reported and eight percent of gross receipts. Therefore the IRS is implicitly assuming the average tip to be eight percent.