I've got a story about tipping. Warning: It does contain gratuitous situations. (bad pun)

One time I was at Chili's (a nice dine-in restaurant chain) with my family enjoying a nice meal. The waitress was friendly; when my little brother spilled his drink, she cheerfully cleaned it up. She was talkative too, it turned out we went to the same high school, though that really didn't come as much of a surprise in our small town. Basically, she did a great job and deserved a fat tip.

Unfortunately, my dad was running a little short on money that day and had only enough to leave $2.00 on the table. He was broke. We left the restaurant and got into the car to leave, when who should come bursting out of the restaurant but the waitress! Oh, was she mad. "$2.00? You call that a tip? I worked my tail off for you people! Is this some kind of joke?" And on and on and on (profanities deleted in this post). Well, we didn't have another penny for her so we drove off in a hurry and she huffed back into the building to wait some more tables.

That's how low the fine art of tipping has fallen. I seriously thought that girl was going to bust out the windshield or something -- all because we gave her a smaller-than-usual tip. I fear what would have happened if we had left nothing at all, which used to be a perfectly acceptable practice. People today...

-useless"When did 'gratuity' abandon 'gratitude?'"ness