If you're a guest at a sit-down restaurant, you should come already expecting to tip. You should come knowing that it will be your bill, plus a service tip. That's just the way it works.

Now, as a server, we, or at least I, don't expect 20% tips every time automatically. I don't know who is putting that idea in your head. If the service is honestly bad, if they have an attitude, or an order mess up falls on the server, I don't expect a 20% tip.

20% is the standard, though, if your visit went wonderful, which is what we all want your experience to be like. That's our job; to make sure everything goes 100% smoothly, to make sure your special requests and needs are met, and to communicate with every other staff member we need to in order to make sure that you get what you need and more to have a nice meal out.

If you boycott tipping for whatever reason, you're wrong. Plain and simple. You don't have an argument. If we gave you good service, we expect something, and it's not an entitlement. It's our job. Here me out.

First of all, we don't care about personal politics on the issue. Whether or not you think it's fair that restaurants pay an average of $2.13 to their servers, or you believe it's "not your job" to pay the rest our wages don't matter. We're not here to debate about this.

I don't care about your personal government argument and here's why: If you don't think it's fair, and you think it should be different, or that restaurants should be paying their servers more, fine, I totally get that. But they simply don't, and there's nothing in place that looks like that will be changing anytime soon, so if you want to boycott the way this system works, that's understandable, and there are ways around it:

If you don't "believe in tipping," especially for the aforementioned reason, you have other options. The obvious one is don't go out to eat. Make your own food at home.

If you can't afford an extra tip, that's completely understandable and I'm sympathetic towards that, but there's always carry out. You can still enjoy your meal at home.

We aren't concerned with personal views on tipping, or whether or not you think it's your responsibility because that's just the way going out to eat at a sit-down restaurant works, and it has always been this way, so I'm not sure where all the hostility is coming from lately.

If you're one of those people who goes to the same restaurant and just never tips because that's what you believe in, even if nothing went wrong, just know that all of the servers recognize you and your party, and will not want to wait on you at all. No one will want to take your table; the staff will literally play rock paper scissors for who has to wait on you, and you will be their last priority. If we know we're not going to get absolutely anything no matter how much we try to go above and beyond, then we simply won't go above and beyond. You'll come last out of all other tables, and that's only fair if "no tip, no matter what" is your mindset.