Recently, I was at a restaurant with my girlfriend and her friend and we had an appetite for some wings. It was an average Saturday night with a good amount of customers, but also with an ample amount of waiters and waitresses to cover the tables.’ We sat down, and after about ten minutes, a waitress approached us to take our drink order.’ The two ladies ordered waters and I ordered a beer, then we set to peruse the menu more thoroughly for what we wanted in the ways of grub.’ Around 20 minutes later, our waitress returned with our three drinks and left without taking our food order. We looked over at the next table filled with people who arrived after us, but were already getting their food, served by the same waitress. The one thing that separated me and my company from the table next to us is that we were college-aged and they were middle-aged or more. It was a classic case of the waitress hunting for a tip and assuming we were going to stiff her in that department. Well, you know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me. I have experienced this kind of prejudice before, but never so blatantly as to get virtually no service whatsoever. There is a common, unfortunate stereotype that young people do not tip well. I know it does happen, but I refuse to believe it’s so terrible the mere sight of young people sitting in a waitress’ table section is enough to drive the waitress away. I personally take pride on being a young person who tips well; I usually start at 18 per cent and work up from there. That’s better than many adults with full-time jobs and hefty savings accounts, yet I can’t even get proper service half the time I go into restaurants. I tip well anyway because I hate the stereotype.’ I’ve been trying to reverse this stereotype one waiter at a time, but I can only touch so many lives at a time. I learned long ago when my older sister was working as a waitress and would complain about people who left sub-par tips despite doing everything necessary to make sure customers had a good experience. However, that wouldn’t make her want to serve people worse because you won’t know what you will get until you get it. You can’t just clump people into tip-group stereotypes. When I have experienced this shoddy service at restaurants I think about this and wonder why, even though they think they won’t get a good tip, they do their job so lazily and give up on it.’ Hell, I have never worked a job that got tips at all, yet I still worked my ass off to help people out however they needed it because that was my job. I didn’t look at some young people who walked in and think, ‘Oh man, they’re going to be difficult, I’m just going to ignore them.” It just is not the way I was raised, and I refuse to believe it’s the way many young people were raised, yet it still happens.’ I understand waiters and waitresses usually only make a little over $2 an hour which barely covers taxes, so tips are their financial sustenance. I heard enough about it all from my sister as well as my mother, who used to be a waitress in college, and that is why I try to tip well and prove there are young people who can give a decent tip.’ Either there is a problem of stingy students who aren’t going to tip well no matter how good the service or they are willing to tip well, but without decent service to back it up, they won’t do it. I know this is like arguing whether the chicken or egg came first, but I think more good will come if service for young people at restaurants becomes equal to the average adult coming into the restaurant. At the end of the day, at least no one can say you didn’t try to do well and no one can question your work ethic.’ And for the young people out there reading this, for God’s sake, tip better at restaurants, because you give the rest of us a bad name, and the waiters and waitresses almost always deserve something more than 7 percent for their time. With one hand washing the other, we can all live and eat peacefully when we go out next time.