[christiangirl]

I generally tip 15% then round up to the next dollar amount. Or, if it was a really good server, I'll go higher. I don't work out percentages, I just guesstimate on what I think is fair. If my meal was $25 and you were good, I'll leave you $5. If you were excellent, I might go as high as $8. I don't really care what percent that is, it just sounds fair to me.

But I have no problem tipping low if the service was bad. I can only remember one time when I didn't leave a tip at all. I went to a girl's birthday party at a restaurant and the waitress had the most HORRIFIC attitude. Apparently, she went to our school and knew a couple of us, but I'd never seen her before. She was rude and snotty, hardly ever returned to our table. It was almost impossible to get a refill from her and when one of us would flag her down to ask, she huffed and rolled her eyes like we were asking for her stem cells. She took forever bringing our food and messed up the majority of the orders, then doubled the attitude when we asked her to fix it. Granted, we were large party and took up about 2 1/2 tables and the place was pretty busy, but we were all polite and tried to have good conversation with her. She was just acting so awful and catty, you'd have thought one of us did something to her. One of the guys told her (gently) that her rudeness was not necessary and if we had offended her to just let us know instead of all the attitude, and she just snapped at him about minding his business. We called the manager over and asked for a different server to bring us dessert. We just did not want to see her again and none of us left her anything. We did leave tips for the girl who served us dessert, she was very kind and even though she was busy, she never forgot about us. That's the only time and I fully think she deserved the big pile of nothing that she got. When I suspect a server's just having a bad day, I usually tip high to brighten it instead of the opposite, but she was just being ridiculous.