It depends on the person, but some countries like Austria have points-based systems that will work for some people. It's how I'm getting a visa currently and I just needed a job offer.
Or they could have been kitchen-staff. They are one of the biggest victims of tipping culture.
Essentially chefs are generally paid much, much less than wait-staff and it is very difficult to correct this balance. The reason is that in a normal business you would raise prices to afford to pay higher salaries, but since tips are percentage based this also raises the wages of wait-staff. This becomes a bigger and bigger issue the higher the tipping percentage goes. Restaurant margins tend to be razor thin as well, so raising prices would be the only way to raise kitchen-staff wages.
It's one reason why many restaurants are struggling to find kitchen-staff, because even highly trained chefs can make 2-3 times as much working front-of-house. There are quite a few restaurants which are trying to fix this by banning tips, but it's difficult due to resistance from customers and wait-staff.
Are you English speaking by any chance? In Germany I often notice that the waiters act totally differently whenever my American parents are visiting than when I'm just out with friends and speaking German.
With Germans they just show up with the card reader and we pay one by one; often people will ask to round up their bill to the nearest Euro but it's not expected.
With my parents (or other Americans that have visited me) they often act like American waiters and bring the bill and then kind of hover next to us and wait for us to initiate what we want to do next. I think they've learned that most Americans will assume 'this is the part where we work out how much tip to give' and the waiters often end up with a (for German standards) gigantic tip. At least this always works with my parents since 'we feel bad not tipping!'
Seriously, it's wild to me that people are against this.
The right to self-determination is important, regardless of what an old document (the US constitution in this case) says. Tons of countries (including the US!) became independent despite 'not being allowed to'.
Also -- think of what cutting off Texas would do for the American political balance.... we might actually get to pass progressive legislation for once!
That's just saying "people who are in a social community are happier and more engaged than those that aren't" because most social communities are currently religious focused.
Or, arguably even more importantly, conservatives argue that this is actually about 'mental health issues' but then subsequently refuse to do anything to improve mental health. So they don't even bother trying their own proposed solution.
You would think at this point that the US would have the most robust mental-healthcare system on the planet!
Basically just further proof that car traffic doesn't scale well. It's just an incredibly space inefficient way to get around.