If you have ever waited tables, you know the difference between a bad server and a good server having a bad day. And no matter what, you tip.

If like me you have waited tables in your past, you tip (and probably overtip) because you remember busting your butt for a big, demanding party, only to find a smattering of coins left behind on the tablecloth. You tip because you never forget that reassuring feel of cash in hand, for groceries, a movie, for rent — money that was somehow more real than that less-than-minimum wage paycheck you got.

Lawmakers here in Florida — our state being particularly reliant on tourists, and tips — have been considering changing how restaurants can pay tipped employees.

Senate Bill 2106 would allow restaurants to cut servers' hourly wage by more than half, but in some cases would require compensating them another way.

At best, this bill, with its fuzzy, complicated math, is a creative attempt to give a boost to struggling restaurants.

At worst, it's a bad deal for a lot of folks who live on tips.

Now maybe there are people out there who wait tables or tend bar and go home at night to sip champagne on the balconies of their gulffront homes.

But I'm betting they're as rare as a 30 percent tip at the early bird special.

Most servers work hard to make a living, whether it's pouring pitchers of beer or fancy cocktails, running out plates of eggs and hash or Chauteaubriand for two.

Here's the math (and, deep breath, if you happen to be similarly number-challenged): Florida employers pay people who also make tips $4.65 an hour, which is $3.02 less than minimum wage. Those dollars left behind on tables or that 15 to 20 percent jotted down on credit card slips supposedly make up the difference.

And on a good night, they do.

But if this bill became law, restaurants could opt to pay servers only $2.13 an hour, or less than half what they were making.

An outrage, right? But before we get railing on politicians who would sooner dine on frog sushi than tax the rich, but are more than willing to hit a workaday waiter where it hurts, consider the rest.

The restaurant also guarantees the employee will make at least $9.98 an hour, which is more than minimum wage.

So if a server makes only, say, $8 an hour in tips and hourly wage combined, the restaurant makes up the difference.

The problem? (More math:) If a server does well, as in, makes more than that $9.98 an hour, she still only gets $2.13 an hour from the boss instead of the $4.65 she used to make.

In effect, critics of this bill will tell you, that means a pay cut for a lot of servers, and not chump change, either.

Those who like this bill call it a way to help restaurants survive.

Critics complain that it's really just pandering to the restaurant industry. Lawmakers deserve some credit for creative thinking on behalf of business in this tough economy.

But the thing is, real people serving up pizzas and parking cars for a living are struggling, too.

And doing this on the backs of those who live for tips would be like fewer coins left on the tablecloth at the end of a very long night.