I live in Canada and always tip 15%.....unless the waitress/waiter is inattentive and rude...then she/he's lucky if they get 10%, but I always tip. Going out to dinner is very expensive, unless you go to a fast food place and even then, that can sometimes also be pricey for a family, but any kind of nice restaurant is sometimes way overpriced. Maybe the restaurant owners should pay their employees more than minimum wage, because they most certainly charge enough. The best restaurants in my city are always busy, so I'm sure they pull in quite a pretty penny. Andy you always see people drinking alcohol and you know that they make a lot money on those sales, so I think it's up to the restaurants to pay better wages. I don't mind leaving a tip, but I don't think it's up to the customers to pay their salary!

Hello guest616, We'd like to respond to your concerns raised about Oprah's thoughts on tipping. The truth is that Oprah has never said that people should tip less during the recession. She believes in generously compensating waiters and waitresses.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance. Thank you for being a valued member of Oprah.com.

HarpoBear, Oprah.com Community Producer

so, where did this tipping 'rumor' come from? because that's what it is now, and that's what everyone I know is talking about. Whether she said it or not (or said it "in so many words") people still think it's OK to tip less. I am certainly feeling it!! I think Oprah should do a show (and some research) about servers, how much work they do (who they have to tip out to, taxes to the government, no healthcare etc). Go for it! Seriously! Shed some light on the situation because clearly she has no understanding of it. I volunteer to be followed. I would love for her to see "a life in the day of.."

I say consumers should stop tipping altogether and just have the servers employer pay their employees properly themselves and just let the customers be treated as the guests of the restaurant that they truly are.

Remember customers are the guests of the restaurant, not the guest of the server.

If you were to go to a real fancy dinner party, where the dinner was catered. The caterers are there to server the guests. Customers at restaurants are the paying guests of the restaurant owners and the servers are there to just server the customers. It is the servers job to serve the customers. It is the customers job to pay for the meal they ordered.

Why should servers be given a tip for just doing the job they were hired to do in the first place?

Really? I think you failed to grasp the concept of paying for a service. You are tipping for service! You have so many options, such as home cooked meals, buffets, fast food, or carry out. If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out.

Here's the problem with that: it is just all together a bad idea. First of all, it is uneconomical for the resturaunt. Why would you pay the approximately 20 servers and bartenders you have to staff a resturaunt with $10/hr or more when you can pay them $3? Secondly, being tipped ensures we are not rude to customers. I have had co-workers be called "servants" amongst other rude comments (by the way, that co-worker is a single woman paying her rent AND for college). Most of the time, people aren't rude though.

For a lot of servers, tips are the only barrier between being nice and rude to certain customers.

If you'll go look at the Oprah magazine site and her guide to equitte and her guests, like the author of Waiter Rant, you'll see Oprah has repeatedly and many times advocated for proper tipping. How this hoax got started is something I don't know. Why it persists in the face of the fact its completely false and there is NO evidence to support it and plenty of evidence showing its not true is something I blame on the culture of our times which discourages independent thought and encourages disdain for those who have succeeded in life as Oprah clearly has.

The reason people are making such a big deal over a rumor is because even though it was actually said by Suze Orman, people follow Oprah's "word". Therefore, since they think it's true, they do it.

As noted above, Oprah NEVER said tip less, NEVER! People believe she did because they need a scapegoat to blame and she's a convenient target. It's really (to quote Bill Clinton) "The economy stupid!"

As to Suze Orman, just as with Oprah, if you will do a little research you will find that she NEVER said tip less either. What she did say was "go for one month without eating out" as a part of her get out of debt "action plan." Somehow, thanks to the web, her suggestion that people not go out to eat for a month has been morphed by the web into a recommendation that people tip less. However, neither of them said to tip less.

Servers, you need to understand that times are tough for people, not just you, and it is because of these tough economic times that some people are in fact tipping less. Sad, but true. Spreading the lie around that Oprah or Suze said to tip less though only hurts servers and helps no one.