Tipping for douche bags

A friend told me that she recently refused to leave a waiter a tip. She explained that the waiter brought the wrong order, the wrong wine, didn’t give her table any attention and then dropped a note on the table with his phone number (which she and her sister promptly prank-called throughout the weekend). I agreed with her. No tip for the creepy waiter.

Generally, I still tip during poor service. Due to various employment laws waiters and waitresses get paid very little hourly because the state and Internal Revenue Service assumes that they’ll make up the rest of a supposedly fair income in tips (the IRS taxes tips, FYI.) Furthermore, a portion of a server’s tips usually go to the busers, bartenders, cooks and so on. I leave 15 to 20 percent for good to great service. For poor service, I still usually leave 10 percent. The golden rule applies to tipping: Even if the server doesn’t do you well, you should still do well to the server.

The only time I left no tip was when a waiter literally shushed me so he could take a personal call on his cell phone. Oh, and my dining companion actually had to ask him to stop looking at her chest. No, wait, I did leave a tip: I wrote on the tip line, “Don’t be such a douche.”