My Friend is a Bad Tipper — Counseling Corner

Every Thursday we highlight a problem from a listener. We give our advice and ask other listeners to offer advice. Welcome to the Counseling Corner.

Dear Brain & Courtlin,

I'm having some trouble with one of my friends and I'm hoping some of your listeners could help me out. My best friend "Becky" and I make a point to meet for dinner or drinks a few times a month to maintain our close friendship. We both have busy lives and families, so this is our way of keeping up on eachother's lives. I absolutely love spending time with her, but there is one issue I can't seem to resolve: Becky is a terrible tipper. I never noticed it before, but a few weeks ago she left the table and I saw her receipt, and she had only tipped $3 on her $40 bill. I'm a firm believer in tipping well, as I know servers rely heavily on tips, so this was kind of shocking to me. Since then I have been noticing it more and more. The worst part is that most of the time we alernate who pays for the bill, so about half the time she is tipping for the both of us. Because we frequent the same restaurants over and over, I don't want to get a cheap reputation. I've even tried to leave an additional tip for our servers when she's paying, but she gets insulted and tells me to put my money away. I don't want to upset my friend or stop going out with her, but it's really not fair to the servers to tip so little and it's also kind of embarassing for me. What should I do?

Dana