I have noticed in our modern-day society that many people do not realize the importance of tipping their waiters and waitresses. I see this whenever I go out to eat with my family and friends. Many people, especially college students, leave the restaurant without leaving a single dime for their server. This can sometimes be understandable if they had an absolutely horrible server, but often times the server did nothing wrong. I personally have never had to work in the serving industry, but I can see that waitresses and waiters get taken advantage of. Below, I have listed five reasons that will hopefully influence everyone to think about tipping whenever they go out to eat.

1. The minimum wage for waitresses/waiters is $2.13 an hour excluding tips.

Even though employers are supposed to make up the difference if servers are not tipped enough, it does not always happen. Actually, this is a common thing. A lot of servers do not even know this rule. Even if they do, many servers feel scared to talk to their employers when they are not covering the difference. Therefore, the servers get paid very little.

2. Everyone has their good days and bad days.

Just because a server messed up serving you does not mean that he/she is a bad server. You do not know the circumstances that led up to them messing up. No one is perfect, and servers should not have their pay cut drastically for the day because of a few small mistakes.

3. It is common courtesy to tip between 15%-20% for a good server.

This is not that much. If your meal is ten dollars, then a two dollar tip would be a large tip. Even if you have a bad server, you should at least leave something.

4. The government relies on the public to tip for waitresses/waiters to be paid fairly.

If you do not tip, then waitresses/waiters will get paid less than half of the standard minimum wage unless their employers cover it. So, take your servers and their families into consideration before you leave the table.

5. Better paid servers leads to better service.

A happy server is a well-paid server. It has been proven that customer service improves when employees are fairly paid. If people want the best quality of customer service, they should begin to tip their servers. It will not only benefit the waitresses/waiters, but also the customers.