Totally with Norman. I’d rather the first 15% was included in the bill and if it was really horrible service you could just talk to the manager. Tipping punishes the generous, economically speaking.

Danny and Esther, I sometimes do bar trivia and board games at restaurants and stuff and I tend to sit at the table for a long time when these things happen, but I think that’s expected. I hope it doesn’t deny the waitstaff anything they could otherwise be getting.

My basic rule is that for service that is decent but nothing special, I tip 15 percent on the pre-tax amount. For good service, I tip 15 percent on the post-tax amount, and then round it up a bit. For excellent service, I tip 20% on the post-tax amount. For bad service, I tip around 10%. For horrible service, I wouldn’t leave a tip, but I’ve never actually done this. Some of the main determinants in my mind of the quality of the service is a good attitude, a good ability to describe menu items and make recommendations, getting my order right, and being prompt without rushing me, and keeping my water glass full.

The whole tipping system seems weird to me. I would rather just have restaurants pay servers better and then not have to tip them. I always have a small part of me saying, “just don’t leave a tip. It’s legal. Unless you’re planning to come back, it’s against your rational self interest to leave a tip.” To combat this tendency, I try to tip according to fairly regular rules so that I don’t think about it excessively.

It really gets on my nerves that you’re supposed to tip at bars because, hey, all they do is pull out a beer and give it to you. How is that a high level of service? I can see tipping for a well-prepared mixed drink, but I don’t understand tipping for beer, which already has a fairly ridiculous markup. Yeah, basically I don’t understand the whole idea of bars. But I tip around 15% at bars anyway, because it’s customary to do so.

Always going in for the internet trends!

Personally, when I’m serving, I think about the minimum someone would have to give me for me to do all the things they’ve asked of me, and I get irked if the person tips below that amount (which is a notion, not a figure).

As Danny suggests, the time you sit at a table is also important. If it’s busy and there are people waiting, you are screwing a server over if you linger past the time when you’ve finished. Her table is her money-making venue; she can’t make more money until you get up. But if it’s not busy, or if it’s a bar where people can walk up and get drinks and go away, the time you spend sitting there isn’t so crucial.

FYI, some restaurants — particularly chains — focus on a server’s average cover (average spent per customer). If the average person spends $10 at Quarry House, a check of $3.25 is a doozy. Management want servers to upsell to raise their average covers and might rag on a server with a low average cover. Sometimes they’ll have contests where the person with the highest average cover wins something (free food, getting out of sidework, etc.).

But really, that’s not your concern. Management can suck it if all you want to order is a burger.