Once the meal at the restaurant ends, there comes that scary moment: Leaving the tip.

This process, by which waiters are, basically, turned into servants, depends prinicipally on one factor: Was the service good or not? Was the waiter attentive (but not overbearing), intuitive, reliable, friendly (but not chummy), helpful, efficient, knowledgable about the menu and wine list and generally clean in appearance and apparel?

If that was the case, tip 20 percent of the bill excluding tax. (We’ll get back to that issue in a moment.) Sorry, but the old 15 percent is no longer sufficient.

For varying degrees of not-so-good service, reduce the amount of the tip by whatever amount you deem appropriate, though there’s no need to humiliate a waiter for a few gaffs or missteps; remember, as several people have pointed out on previous posts to “Whining and Dining,” a great deal of what we think of as mediocre service is the result of lack of instruction or inadequate training on the part of a restaurant’s management. It’s a different case if a waiter has been deliberately rude or arrogant, though I have found that a rare occurrence in almost 20 years of reviewing restaurants for The Commercial Appeal.

In Memphis, the minimum wage for waiters is $2.13 an hour; then there are the tips. The check the waiter receives from the restaurant for the hourly wage, however, usually equals zero, because social security and unemployment taxes on tips must be paid off the top, and that amount comes out of the hourly wage. Plus, many restaurants practice what’s called “tipping out,” which means that waiters give a small portion of their tips to the bartender (who makes the drinks or pours glasses of wine for the table), the food runner (who brings the food to and often clears the table), and the wine steward (if one has helped the table choose a bottle of wine). Of course the bartender, the food runner and the wine steward receive the federal minimum wage or higher, so the portion of “tipping out” they receive from waiters represents a nice extra amount of cash.

I mean, it’s not easy to earn a living as a waiter, unless you’re a well-known, longtime waiter at a high-end restaurant.

The reason you should calculate your tip on the bill before various taxes are applied
is that those taxes have nothing to do with the restaurant and the effort of everyone involved that went into producing your meal and entertaining you; waiters shouldn’t expect a slice of tip on the tax the city is charging you for spending your money.

And if you’re in a restaurant where wine is served, examine your check carefully. State and city taxes on wine are supposed to be included in the price of the wine as stated on the wine list — and they add up to about 25 percent. My point is that the restaurant should not calculate the tax portion of your bill on the wine; you’ve already paid that.

Image from HowStuffWorks.com.