Photo: Jason Reidy/Flickr

Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the first in a series of posts.

The first time I saw a fellow server settle into a booth with her customers while taking orders, I was seriously concerned.

I was a veteran of both high- and low-end cuisine, but had never seen such a thing. I immediately assumed she was too tired to carry on, and never suspected she was angling for a better tip.

As folks who ate out in the early 1990s may recall, researchers discovered in 1993 that sitting down with customers -- like drawing a smiley face on the bill or wearing a flower in one's hair -- was a sure route to a bigger tip.

Read on, plus a poll, after the jump.

Michael Bauer, the restaurant critic for the SF Chronicle, brought up the subject of service charges at restaurants on his blog. Tipping, whether you like it or not, is still the standard in the US and diners are used to it. Up until recently, the only time that a service charge was included on the bill in lieu of a tip was when you had a very large party out for dinner. Some restaurants, notably higher-end places like Chez Panisse and Per Se, have flat-rate service charged tacked on to the bill regardless of how many diners are in your party, streamlining the process for those footing the bill and giving the restaurant staff an ample enough fee that some of that charge can be diverted to "tip" the back of the house staff.

More recently, in a strange hybrid between the two styles of gratuity payment, at least one restaurant has begun to add on a service charge to cover the back of the house, while expecting customers to tip the waitstaff. Incanto, in San Francisco, is the example that Bauer pointed to. He noticed that they added a 5% service charge to his bill with no explanation. When he asked his waiter, he was told that it was supposed to be in addition to the normal tip, although some customers deducted it from what they would usually leave. Clearly, having both additional fees wasn't working out well for the front of the house staff even if it did benefit those in the kitchen.

As Bauer points out, it sounds like we may be reaching a turning point in this country when it comes to tipping. He says he is "beginning to edge closer to the opinion that maybe an automatic service charge should be applied, or that prices of the menu should fully compensate the staff." It certainly sounds like a reasonable solution.

Does it irritate you when a waiter drops off your food at your table, you haven't even taken a bite of your food, then he sprints back to see if "everything is alright?" What about a server who constantly refills your water glass, even though it never dips below half-full? Do you hate having to search the table for salt and pepper shakers, only to find that the restaurant doesn't provide them because "the food has already been properly seasoned and therefore doesn't need more salt?"

It sure bothers Nora Ephron, who has written a funny Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about what kinds of things you can expect (and not expect) these days when you're dining out: Pellegrino too eagerly poured into inappropriately oversized glass, fresh ground pepper from enormous peppermills, and giant dessert spoons.

We've also talked about whether servers should clear plates as diners finish or all at once at then end, but are there other things that irk you about restaurant behaviors when you're dining out?

A recent USA TODAY article talked to several business executives and found that many use a person's treatment of restaurant staff as a judge of character. Many view the folks serving their food or filling their glasses as "temporary personal employees," the article says. As such, someone's attitude toward their waiter often reflects how that person behaves toward their real employees. Likewise, someone who doesn't lose their cool over a spilled glass of wine is often likely to remain calm when confronted with mistakes or stressful situations on the job. Several of the CEOs interviewed said they based hiring decisions strongly on how a candidate treated waiters as well as personal assistants and other subordinates.

I have to admit I don't quite understand what this Slate piece is trying to say. The writer is trying to explain why great restaurants often hire rude, I-don't-give-a-shit waiters. It starts out intriguing, and I think I'm going to find out, but then it turns into a discussion of certain products that Adobe and Intel have. Huh? I mean, I sort of get the point - the comparison between waiters that work the dining room and ones that work the bar - but I don't think his examples translate into answering the question, "why do restaurants hire rude waiters?"

I was a waiter myself for several years, and I think I've mentioned my #1 life tip to you before: whatever you do, don't ever tick off a waiter, waitress, or anyone who serves you food or drink. If you've ever been really rude to a server, I can almost guarantee you you've eaten something that you probably didn't want to eat.

I never did it myself, but, oh, I could tell you stories.   

The always-funny Waiter Rant recently posted an extensive list of tips entitled "How To Order Wine Without Looking Like An Asshole." Just what it sounds like, this is a collection of common sense advice with gems such as "don't ask 'what's cheap?'" and "don't smell the plastic cork." There are suggestions about tipping on wine and not trying your hardest to stump your waiter about the soil in which a particular grape is grown. Also, there's plenty of practical advice, such as knowing that some states, such as New York and Florida, allow patrons to take the rest of their bottle of wine home as long as it's in a special bag. The more than 100 comments that accompany Waiter's post are pretty informative as well.

My husband and my sister-in-law are both currently working in food service, he a part-time caterer while he returns to school, she a table-waiting lifer. Both have recently been involved in that dreaded of all most crooked food service behavior: the manager who wants in on the tips.

For J., who usually tends bar and has a knack for earning a boatload of tips, one manager in particular has been tipping herself out of the bartender's pool at the end of the night. She's the only manager in the company who does it and he won't report her (though I've suggested it) because, he tells me, she's so miserable. Life is not treating her right - who is he to make it worse?

I say, though, it's a matter of principle. Food service workers may not share a very large body of common ethics, but there are two that are universal: (1) always tip generously when being waited upon by others and (2) managers may be paid less than they deserve but they never, no never, get tipped out.