I don’t care if you’re a “poor college student.” I don’t care if you’re having a hard time financially. I don’t care if you only brought enough cash to pay for the meal alone. When dining out you must tip. There are no exceptions to this rule. If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out.

Having spent the majority of my adult life working in the restaurant industry, I have an affinity for gratuity. It’s the kind of appreciation that can only be understood after spending countless hours in a hot kitchen washing dishes, grilling food or running orders to tables. Tipping those who serve you can seem arbitrary, but until the people who work themselves to death start receiving fair compensation for their efforts, it remains vital.

The real problem starts with the numbers. According to the United States Department of Labor, tipped employees are required to make a minimum of $2.13 an hour in addition to their tips. If their tips and hourly wage do not add to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, employers must pay the difference. States are allowed to make their own laws regarding the compensation of tipped employees as long as they don’t go below this federal minimum. Currently, there are only seven states that require businesses to pay employees the full $7.25 before they get their tips.

This leaves the rest of the country and its service industry with a rate of pay that is far from consistent. Some weeks, a restaurant employee may make minimum wage while other weeks they make three or four times that much. This is largely up to you. In food service, tips and gratuity are many times split among a restaurant’s entire staff at the end of the night. Cooks, bussers, servers and others will all receive a portion of the nightly haul. There is no such thing as food service without the efforts of each and every one of these employees.

Leaving an insignificant tip doesn’t just affect one server, but an entire staff. It also shows a complete lack of respect for the hard work they do night after night to assure you simply receive that steak on time. As a patron of a restaurant, bar or cafe, it becomes your responsibility to fairly compensate the people who are working on your behalf. It’s an invisible contract that is signed when stepping through the door. A friend who works in upscale dining once received a one-cent tip on a $93 tab. One cent.

The receipt was even signed with a note reading “you’re the best from all the rest!” This level of blatant disregard for common decency is appalling, and the customer’s actions are just about punishable by death in this industry. Sadly, this isn’t completely out of the ordinary, even in fine dining.

If a server takes good care of a customer, that same customer is obligated to return the favor, no matter what. Tipping may be a few extra dollars, but it means everything to someone who is trying to pay their bills. Society hasn’t set a price on good service. It’s up to us as consumers to decide what it’s worth, and we need to value it. This principle extends far beyond food service. Cab drivers, hair stylists, bathroom attendants and deliverymen, among others, rely on gratuity to get by.

It’s high time that we refuse the notion that tipping these folks is optional, because it’s not. I once made 50 cents after working for four hours in an empty diner on Super Bowl Sunday. There were only two tables that night; one of them did not tip. I was 16 at the time and far too concerned with a football game to understand the implications of a grown person with actual responsibilities and a family having the same experience.

It is sickening to think that people in any business would be treated this way, but it’s also a reality that each of us can do something about. Most calls to action don’t pan out, but this one is simple. Don’t forget to treat the people who wait on you like human beings. They deserve it.