Also, specific to the role of Speaker, he’s disqualified due to having been indicted of felonies with a term of more than two years.

Hopefully they just haven’t thought about that yet

David Weber’s Honorverse and Mother of Demons by Eric Flint both come to mind. There is also the Little Fuzzy series by H. Beam Piper.

Edit: Also, The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Honorable mention also to Dragons Egg by Robert L. Forward (humans start out more advanced in the beginning but get surpassed) and the Uplift Storm trilogy omnibus (or books 4-6) from David Brin (humans aren’t the most advanced in the entire universe but are in the planet that the stories take place on).

I think the service charge bit, that is widespread as an alternative to tipping in Europe, makes a lot of sense in general.

Key word in the above sentence is: alternative