Until I actually worked in a restaurant as a server, I was the guy who would just approximate a dime and nickel percentage, slap it on the table, and walk away. I wasn't a bad person, I was just an ignorant one.
But now, having spent seven months as a server at a full-service Italian restaurant, I think I am qualified to offer a few guidelines that will greatly decrease your chances of being the "cheap weasel" villain of side-station chatter.
First off, you've got to ask why you'd tip at all. You worked hard for your money, didn't you, so why go giving it away to someone who is already getting paid for their work? That's a good question, I guess, but if you're going to count quarters in a restaurant, then perhaps the first question you should ask is... should I be going out to eat at all? I mean, seriously. It will cost you at the very least twice (and probably three times) as much to eat in a full-service restaurant as it would to eat at home. If money is such an issue for you, maybe you shouldn't be wasting it on extravagance.
Still, if you're going to wallow in opulent decadence, here are some justifications for ending your meal with a nice, friendly tip.
While servers do get paid, the most they make is minimum wage. In British Columbia, Canada (where I started as a server) that minimum wage is 8 dollars an hour. In Ontario it is less, and servers there get paid only around four dollars an hour. In the U.S. there are a few States (like Oregon) where servers get paid minimum wage, but in most States the servers get paid HALF minimum wage, which in South Carolina (where I served last year after relocating) is around five dollars - so servers there make around two-fifty an hour. After taxes are withdrawn, the paycheck almost always comes out to exactly ZERO. In most other countries around the world, servers make almost nothing as well (so tip generously, you penny-pinching arrogant rich tourist stinkpot!), but suffice it to say that an American cannot possibly afford to live on serving wages without a lot of help from your tips.
Yes, restaurants could pay the servers more, but not only would that up the price of the food (the profit margin is thin in restaurants), you would get worse service - guaranteed. Serving is REALLY hard and stressful, and there are very few people in this world who will strive for excellence in a work situation like that if it doesn't directly affect their income. Servers are shift workers who will only get maybe three to four hours a shift where they're really busy, and if they don't get tipped really well during the peak hours, it's likely they won't make rent.
So tip. Tip generously. While a lot of servers are just young dumb kids, living at home and spending all that disposable income on booze and two hundred dollar hair appointments, a good number of them are single mothers, or students, or artists just trying to get by. If you can afford to blow money on the luxury of a restaurant meal, you can afford to generously tip.
What's a generous tip? Well, I'll tell you what isn't. Zero dollars is not a generous tip. Zero dollars is only justifiable if your server is obviously, blatantly rude to you. Not leaving her other table and rushing to the snap of your fingers is NOT rude. You are not the king or queen of the universe, and buying a twenty-dollar meal does not give you the right to treat another human being like crap. Even if you do tip her something between zero and ten percent and you are nice to her and you tell her what a good job she did, a dollar fifty does not pay the bills.
Ten percent is a tip you give if your server is obviously harried and running like mad and stressed and isn't really taking good care of you and when you ask for something you just get blown off. However, if stuff does go wrong, there is a chance it's not the servers fault, and that she is doing her best to make you happy despite this, so you should probably still consider tipping her fifteen percent anyways. That's standard, and she's probably having a rough enough time without getting jack-diddly from your seized-shut wallet. Let me repeat, loudly: FIFTEEN PERCENT IS STANDARD for decent-to-good service.
Twenty percent is a nice tip - if you're buying the cheapest thing on the menu, you should consider leaving this sort of tip. Anything over twenty percent is a really generous tip. Thirty-five percent (and higher) tips are wicked awesome. Be proud of yourself - no one is cursing your name in the back, or scratching the inside of their nose with the spout of your teapot.
Here are situations where if you don't leave a generous tip, you're really just a big trash can full of poop:
One: you've been really demanding. This could mean that you've made the server change something about every meal your table orders (extra mushrooms, hold the garlic sauce, substitute penne noodles for linguine... no, wait, make that wheat spaghetti... no, wait - do you have the colored tortellini?). This costs the server time and effort in three places: at your table, at the computer entering the order, and in the back, making sure the kitchen gets it right. It is complicated and your server has got other things to worry about, so be easy on her and if she pulls it off, be really nice. Another way to be demanding is to ask for lots of refills on everything. If there are refills available, it's your prerogative to ask for them - but be nice about it - you are not the only person in your server's world.
Two: you're a camper. When you come to a restaurant, you are paying for a meal - not a place to spend the night. If you want to chat for three hours over a cup of coffee, consider going to a coffee shop. Your server is assigned a specific set of tables, and if you hang out in one of them for twice the usual time, you would do well to tip her twice the usual amount.
Three: you change your mind about stuff a lot. Don't do this, but if you do it and your server obviously goes out of her way to accommodate you, be generous.
Four: if your table spends seventy dollars on meal and your server runs like a crazy cat to get things done for you, but you have a gift card that brings the bill down to twenty dollars, don't tip out your fifteen or twenty percent on the twenty dollars - that's just pathetic. Or if you're a whiney little punk with an overblown sense of entitlement, and you get a manager out and your meal for free because your chicken's a little tough or you didn't get as much steak sauce as you wanted or your server didn't get you your eighth water refill fast enough, don't think that if you then tip a hefty percentage on zero then you're doing the world a favor and striking a blow for justice. Just because you are a complainer does not mean that your server did not do a good job. Always tip out on the original amount of your bill.
That is just about it. Hopefully I've educated you to a point where you can tip with confidence, dignity and (we hope) generosity. I would like to finish up, however, with one final point: buying a meal in a restaurant does not give you the right to barge into another person's life and tell them what to think or do - tipping them really well just might.
There is a patron of my restaurant who comes in every week, spends up to ninety dollars on a meal for herself and her three children, demands all manner of attention, and then tips around one and a half percent. On the back of her credit card slip she writes the reference for this Bible verse: "for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord: plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future". Then she signs it, "God bless, Mrs. S**** and the girls".
Personally, the first time I served this lady I thought it was funny. I mean, c'mon... "prosper you"?!? The fact remains, though, that to the average server the message she is giving is this: "hey, there. I know you work a difficult minimum wage job and I know I make it even harder than usual, but I've got a tip worth even more than money... God wants to prosper you! Isn't that nice?" It reminds me of the Charlie Brown strip where Charlie and Linus, bundled up in warm winter clothes, see Snoopy shivering on top of his dog house. "Snoopy looks cold", says Charlie Brown. "We should go cheer him up", says Linus. So they walk together over to Snoopy, say "Be of good cheer, Snoopy", and walk away.
I tend to think that eating in restaurants as regularly as some people do is a stupid waste of money that could be put it into something useful, like starving people. If you need to celebrate something and you absolutely must go out, however, don't be like Charlie Brown, or the inscrutable Mrs. S****.
Tip like you mean it.
Josh Barkey is an author, painter, teacher and champion tree climber who lives in a shed in North Carolina, writing expansively on whatever comes to mind at http://www.barkingreed.blogspot.com
His current writing project is a spiritual memoir with the rough working title of "Anatomy of an Effup: How One Artist Lost His Wife, His Religion, and Most of His Fear", which he is currently posting in serial form on his blog.
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