I occupy a very privileged place in the restaurant hierarchy: I have specialized knowledge of the products I sell and am able to describe them in appealing ways. But by no means do I work any harder or do anything more crucial to my employer’s success than the dishwasher or the cooks.

In fact, I make way more money than I need to and work way less than they do. It gives me tons of free time to freelance and skate and do whatever the fuck I want to as long as I show up for five hours a night, stay pleasant, and mop some floors. But I don't deserve that any more than the next guy.

I've known this model was unsustainable since I first started as a busboy and wondered just how I was supposed to pay $550 in rent and $350 for my health insurance and insulin working four short shifts a week for a measly 2 percent of net sales. I was taking home $1,200 a month and spending $1,100 a month just to pay rent and have medication and eat. But eventually I made my way up to serving, and suddenly I was picking up tabs and ordering frivolous shit on eBay (Gucci shoes, why?) when I'd come home full of nice food and drunk on nice booze at 3 a.m.

I shouldn't want to make $15 an hour without tips because I make so much more than that under the status quo. But I do, because I remember how hard it was to work at a restaurant before I was a server. I'd rather see everyone do better, even if it means a few of us servers take a hit.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all of us waiters are fat cats. A good waiter who works at a fancy place is basically middle-class. And ideally it would stay that way. But the unfortunate truth is that restaurant owners don't want to pick up the slack, and the debate has been framed in such a way that it pits front of the house against back of the house, when it should pit the workers against the house. But knowing that something's got to give, and it ain't gonna be the owner's Lexus and condo or the bank's interest rate on the business loan, I'd rather it be me. Giving up tips is the compassionate thing to do. It sucks that we're forced to make this Sophie's choice, but if tipping has to end in order to get people a living wage, so be it.

Do I feel bad for some of my fellow servers who have kids and mortgages that depend on the current system? Abso-fucking-lutely. But I feel way worse about the way the guys busting their asses in the dish pit are living. The dudes washing dishes and clearing dirty plates aren't college kids working for beer money anymore. They're doing it for a living like the rest of us, except they ain't making a living. If I gotta scale back on some of my indulgences so they can make ends meet, I'm all fucking for it.

The only concern I have with going tipless is this: I work 20 hours a week, on average. I work the busiest four days I can because the high concentration of tips on those days is enough to make up for the measly amount one nets working half-time for minimum wage. I'm willing to work more, of course, because I realize my relaxed work schedule is another aspect of the front-of-house/back-of-house inequality that pervades the restaurant industry, but I'm kinda worried my employer won't need me to.

I worked a double the other day and I spent 10 hours of that 12-hour shift standing around drinking coffee because I had no tables, every single napkin in the house was folded, and every window was squeaky-clean. For two hours of that shift, we were packed to capacity with a line out the door. I went from bored to weeded in 20 minutes, and we probably did two-thirds of the day’s sales in those two hours.

In all honesty, it's just smart business to only employ people for the four hours of the night most likely to pop. I can't justify myself for more than 20 hours a week. But I also can't qualify for health insurance, and I can't make ends meet, at 20 hours a week, even getting paid $15 an hour. If my employer offered me longer shifts, that'd be great, but I also know it would probably come at the expense of one of the lunch servers’ continued employment, which is not so great.

That said, I still think it's better to do away with tips and let us servers scramble to adjust our lives to the new system. It won't be fun, but something's gotta give, and it should be us waiters—the privileged minority in this situation—who make that sacrifice. If I have to start putting in 40 hours and give up my beloved $17 packets of boquerones, so be it.