> There's no law saying you have to.

Behavior is not defined by law. Social constructs and concepts matter too

Be the only non tipper? No. That breaks the golden rule.

(There is no tipping where I live, I am glad)

This is true, but two things mitigate it. The first is that if you're the one paying the bill, it's pretty easy to do so in a way that nobody you're with can tell how much, or if, you tip. The other thing is that the social consequences aren't that large.

In the end, it's voluntary behavior.

To be transparent, if I saw someone not tip when they took the bill I’d say something. I’ve heard of people looking explicitly at tips when evaluating dates, because it’s perceived as a (vague) proxy for empathy. I’ve also seen workers complain to the customer over not tipping, so you can totally be “outed” by them too.

I’m against tipping like a lot of this thread, but it’s a standard practice in the US. Being the one non-tipper is not changing the system, you’re just hurting the service worker.

Theoretically possible. But have you tried it? I forgot to tip once when I visited the US and the waitress nearly assaulted me.

> But have you tried it?

Yes, I have, and have never had the experience you've had. That sounds more like you got a terrible server than anything else.

Well, it was in San Francisco. Is this something you do frequently? Don't waiters/waitresses confront you about it?

In San Francisco..yeah. At least when I lived there the general mentality of servers was a littlw militant. Not tipping a bartender by mistake had one almost come across the bar at me. If I were not tipping in a major city, I would hustle out before the server noticed.