The first time I didn't tip my server, I was eighteen years old.

I was a Freshman at FSU and still blissfully unaware of any troubles frequently experienced by the working world. I can distinctly remember this experience. It was late, post football game, and my friends and I took to Chili's for a post game meal. It was our usual post game haunt. The server scarcely came to our table, messed up our order, insisted upon calling me some variation of "honey," and split the bill wrong. At the time, I felt extremely justified in withholding any sort of tip. In fact, I bragged to my friends about how "I wasn't going to tip because we'd received bad service."

Now I'm twenty-two going on twenty-three. I've worked a series of jobs, and am currently in food service. I've been so broke that I've paid for things in change. And, most importantly, I fully understand the struggle the server at Chili's was experiencing that night.

It was post football game, the restaurant was on upwards of a 45 minute wait, and there wasn't a vacant table as far as the eye can see. Reflecting back on this night with my own restaurant experience in mind, the server was weeded. Weeded is the term a lot of restaurants use when a server is so overwhelmed they can scarcely function, let alone do their job properly. When you have a full section, all of which are four tops or higher, and they're all screaming as you for something ... it's easy to get weeded.

The Chili's was located on a college campus, thus the already high restaurant turnover was probably exponentially higher. It's likely the server was new and walking into the job with little to no restaurant experience. And the food problems? 99 percent of the time, those sorts of things can be credited back to the kitchen.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, knowing what I know now, I would never not tip my server. Even if the service is downright awful.

I got into a heated debate on Facebook recently about tipping, which is largely what inspired me to shed some light on the topic. So here it goes.

Always tip your server 20 percent. Unless you feel inclined to tip them more than 20 percent (like me). But the base is 20 percent. Always.

To those of you who think there is a sliding scale to tipping, I hope and pray that you take something from this. The logic of no tip for horrible service, 10 percent for bad service, etc should never be applied. And here is why.

The restaurant essentially expects you, the guest, to pay the staff. In my lovely state of Florida, the minimum wage for tipped staff sits a little bit above $5 an hour. However, I have heard reports of the tipped minimum wage being as low as $2 and some change. If you live in a state where there is a state tax (which, fortunately, Florida does not have) your actual "pay" will all be sucked up by taxes. Thus you are left relying entirely on tips to survive.

That's just the tip of the ice berg. At most restaurants, the server pays the rest of the staff. At the end of the night, they have to do tip out. This essentially means that a portion of their tip money goes to the bartender, busboy, and the host. Tip out does not consist of taking 10 percent of earned tips and dividing it between the rest of the staff. Tip out is almost always calculated off the server's total sales, rather than the amount of tips they earned throughout the night. The restaurant determines the tip out rate. Where I work, the tip out rate is $1.25 tip out for every $10 worth of sales. Therefore, if your sales are only $300 for the night, you're going to be tipping out $37.50.

Now let's take that $300 in sales. Most tables have checks averaging about $35 once you factor in food, drinks, and dessert. Thus $300 in sales would be roughly 8 tables for the night, give or take. Let's pretend all of your tables believed in the sliding tip scale, the restaurant went on a 45 minute wait, and you got weeded because table 3 had two kids with dietary restrictions and you had to give them a lot of attention. Even worse, let's pretend the kitchen prepared food for half of your tables wrong. The tables would, of course, blame you for the mistake ... they never see the kitchen. Pretending that all eight of your tables believed in the sliding scale and only tipped 10 percent, you would have only made $28 in tips. Maybe less if some withheld a tip entirely.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Tip out doesn't go away. You would have to give the entirety of your hard earned $28 in tip out, and would still owe $9.50 to either pay out of your own pocket, or submit to tip out the next time you work.

The even sadder truth is that most servers only average 3 shifts a week. Shifts average 4 hours if you work an entire dinner shift. It can be longer if the restaurant is exceptionally busy, but during lull months like the summer it can be even less than that. Restaurants very rarely let staff get near full-time hours to avoid paying for benefits and keep costs down (thanks, Obamacare). So in a world where the sliding scale is acceptable, one bad night could take away a third of the money your server needs to get through the week. This means they may not be able to pay rent, or car insurance, or provide their child with school supplies.

And your server is probably a really amazing person. I have never met a more supportive, amazing group of people then the team of servers where I work. We feed each other, share laughs, and help one another pick ourselves up by the boot straps whenever a shift is rough. But all of the servers are human, and all of them are entitled to having a bad night. And they shouldn't be punished for being off their game. That would be like your boss at your minimum wage job walking up to you and refusing to pay you for a days work because you got swarmed at the register and forgot to smile at a few of the people you rang out. It's not fair.

I know it stinks that we are made responsible for paying our servers. In a perfect world, servers would earn the minimum wage. In a perfect world, servers would be able to provide the same grade of service to every table, rather than paying more attention to the six top over the two top... because the six top will be "obligated" to tip more. But the world is not perfect. And we are stuck paying our servers.

So please tip your servers 20 percent. If you cannot afford to pay the bill and a 20 percent tip, order to-go or consider going out for fast food. And if your server does a fantastic job and you have the means, it doesn't hurt to leave a tip of more than 20 percent. Or, at the very least, write something encouraging on the receipt to let them know they're doing a good job. Sometimes when restaurant staff is having a bad night, a few kind words are all that we need.

Now, thinking back to that night at FSU, had I known what I know now ... I would have happily slapped a 20 percent tip down on the table. I would have told the server to keep her chin up. Because I hope someone will eventually offer the same courtesy to me.