Servers shouldn't have to share tips

A phenomenon has crept into the restaurant culture in the last decade or so that I find totally unfair. I only heard about this through friends who had been servers in restaurants lately. In some restaurants, they total up a server's bills for the shift and the server has to hand over 10% in the form of tips to be shared with the other restaurant workers - whether they earned it or not. So what that means is that if you tip 15% of your bill, the server only gets 5%. If you tip 5%, the server actually owes money out of their own pocket. Is this fair?

Supposedly, the reason this practise was implemented is so that busboyspeople, dishwashers and line cooks get their 'due'. But I argue this - if you want to share in the tips, take the server's job. They don't get paid as much as you already (in most cases), the tips are supposed to offset the lack of salary. In restaurants where hostesses greet you at the door and seat you, I don't feel they are doing the kind of work that warrants diving in the tip jar.

If this is too radical a concept for the industry to grasp, I have an idea. My idea is based on the fact that I seem to be hearing a lot of cases (when we go to a restaurant) of staff not showing up for work on time. If any restaurant staffer is late for work - they don't get their share of tips.