A few comments:

First, if you can't afford the price/cost of something, you do without.

I live in a state, one of several that allows wait staff to be paid under ordinary minimum wage based on the idea that tips will bring servers' pay up to the minimum or above.

Laid on line: The minimum wage in NJ is $7.25 an hour. For "Tipped employees" the minimum is $2.13 - over 2/3 of a "tipped" pay is expected to come from tips.

I wanted to say to Lori that you are the first server I have ever come across who states that you would be happy with a thank-you and a smile.

I guess you don't work in a "tipped employees" state?

As to the old wheeze "To Insure Prompt Service":

If you were going to "insure" prompt service, that means the restaurtant would pay you if service was not propmpt. This would be the Insurance pay-off.

So really, the concept would be tEpping a server - one wants to ensure prompt service. The big question is, how can you ensure prompt service if you don't pay to ensure it until after the service is completed? If you wanted to ensure prompt service, you'd give the server a sawbuck upon arrival.

Finally, since they don't tip in France, it seems unlikely the practice started there.

In the U.S., standard restaurant tip is 15%. Knock off the last digit and add half of that amount to that amount. (These days, although it burns me, it is considered proper to include tax in calculating tip).

One tips on the amount, that's just how it is. There has to be some method for calculating tips. We simply can't estimate the labor differential involved in every meal. Do you really want to remember to pay extra because you dropped your fork and thus made more work for the serveer?

Things have changed for me. I am no longer a bottom rung wage earner. I'm not upper-middle class, but I do alright for myself. I've also become lazier and therefore, I eat out very often.

I hardly ever get poor service. Barely ever. Can't remember any instance off the top of my head. Mostly it is ordinary, adequate service and I give an ordinary, adequate tip. So you had to ask twice for a second glass of water. Even giving a 10% tip is a 33% reduction in pay to server. Pretty stiff hit for being late with a glass of water..

For those who can't seem to bring along money to pay the tip, try asking management if you can't put tip on the card. There really should be no reason you can't. They are accepting the card for payment.

How about if you didn't have the card and you couldn't get to ATM for cash to pay for meal - would you still go out? If you don't have enopugh money, you don't have enough money.

When I did make barely above the minimum, I was already involved with cooking and wine as a hobby. You better believe I didn't want to buy the cheapest entree, the crappiest bottle of wine.

I lusted after fine food and drink.

But I couldn't afford it.

Even today - I would love to drink DRC Burgundies, not all the time, not once a year, how about once - too bad for me, I can't afford it.

Frank, thank you for your really thoughtful comments. I can see this issue is important to you.

Lori lives in So Cal where I lived when i served. I always could rely on minimum wage if i didn't get tips, so i know that at least i was being paid the same as people working retail or many low wage service jobs.

In a state where there was no min wage for servers i'd work somewhere else. You don't HAVE to work as a server.

I live in So. Cal as Jilly said. Now I see that I am the oddball. I guess I'm just plain weird but I believe that good feelings are worth far more than money. One very rude customer really tested my patience then didn't tip. I smiled anyway, and he offered me a job at his hotel restaurant right there on the spot. I politely declined. If his behavior was a clue to how he would be as a boss, I wanted none of it! Even if he was just testing me. It was a better restaurant and tips would have been better but daily environment is more important.

I was a server who served happily because I loved my job and loved people, too. Funny, people tipped me generously all the time. Sometimes, more than 100 percent of the tab!

Frank.....I agree. If you don't have the money, then don't go to places or otherwise do what you can't afford. I believe in tipping for good service, for the attentiveness of the server, for the attitude and professionalism, etc. I know people that tip 20% for good service. Servers really appreciate it, and I think they deserve it if they have done a very good job. Most don't bring home a decent pay without their tips.

I very rarely eat at a place where I need to leave a tip. I feel a tip should be something left for service above and beyond. I don't feel it should be mandatory. But when the server isn't making min. wage then the employer has shifted his responsibility to me the customer and I don't like that. So I rarely go to restaurants.

"I feel a tip should be something left for service above and beyond"

This may be your feeling, but if you live in the U.S., you are mistaken.

In the U.S. tipping a restaurant server for ordinary service is a given. It is how things are done. It is the accepted social convention.

Sez who, you ask. The society you live in sez. With the internet, one doesn't even have to wait for a response from Dear Abby to find the answer to this question.

When I'm hot and tired, I might feel I have just as much right to my bus seat as the elderly person who just boarded (more in fact since I am sitting down, it's my seat), but social convention, that is to say accepted behavior in the society in which I live, mandates that I offer my seat to that person. This is not the rule in all societies, but it is in 20th century U.S.

If you want to be an iconoclast, feel free - but do it at your own expense, not another's.

(Of course I don't mean "you" personally - anyone who believes tipping is only for performance 'above and beyond' is incorrect.)

I was at another website where folks were discussing 'How do you define gourmet?'. Prevalent among responses was the phrase "By my definition". What?

I'm sorry, we don't each get our own definition of a word.

This is and should be more strictly applied than social conventions, but the principle is the same. What we "feel" something "should be" doesn't have any bearing on what that something is.