Is it wrong not to leave a minimum tip on the bill for a restaurant meal?
A reader we’re calling Lawrence reported that he recently was told of a waiter who confronted a party of five who have spent more than $230 on their meals and left a $20 tip. “You only left me $20 for a tip,” the waiter reportedly said to the group as they were leaving.
Lawrence found it unusual for a waiter to confront a party of diners, but he also wondered if the waiter was correct to determine that leaving an 8.7% tip on a meal was wrong.
In the United States, there’s an understanding that waiters typically make less than minimum wage but that the difference is made up for by the tips diners leave. If the server ends up making less than the federal minimum wage after tips are added in, the employer is obligated to make up the difference. The federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour (a rate that hasn’t changed since 2009), and the federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 per hour. Because the federal tipped minimum wage is below the federal minimum wage, most Americans who dine out know that most servers make a living wage based on the tips they receive.
Given this understanding, it is fair to expect that leaving a tip for a server is the right thing to do. Fifteen percent used to be the minimum you’d leave as a tip for service, although that’s creeped up to 18% of late. Many restaurants will feature how much a tip of various percentages would be at the bottom of the dinner check to make it simpler for a diner to calculate and presumably as a nudge to remind them that tipping is expected if not required.
Is a tip required? No, not unless a restaurant automatically adds one onto its checks for diners and makes it clear to diners that they will be doing so.
If service is not great, some diners will decide to leave no tip. They should realize that doing so not only reflects on the service provided, but also results in the server receiving less than minimum wage. When bad service is experienced, an alternative route might be to address concerns to the manager or to avail oneself of one of the various sites available online to leave restaurant reviews. Unless a tip is built into the final bill, however, it’s a diner’s prerogative to leave whatever tip he deems appropriate.
But back to Lawrence’s questions. No, it was not good form for the waiter to call out the diners who left a measly tip. If the restaurant wanted to make sure a minimum tip got paid, they should build that into the bill, even if doing so was bound to annoy some diners who believe they should make such decisions for themselves. Was it wrong to leave a $20 tip on a $230 meal? If the service was good enough, the right thing would have been for the diners to have left at least a 15% tip of $35 to help ensure that server made closer to a living wage. Even if the diners figured that rounding up to $250 total for their meal was just easier, it would have been good to remember that doing so didn’t make anything easier for the server.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2026 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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