I have so often dissed the inept, the preening, the forgetful, the sullen, the loser waiters populating our big blue marble in space. But today, a bright, sunny south Florida day, I look into my soul and see that maybe, sometimes, waiters are more sinned against than sinning. What prompted this revelation? This morning I had breakfast at Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, a Miami gorging tradition. There I watched a succession of elderly, hungry grandmas crack the whip at a long-suffering wait staff, screaming for extra whitefish, demanding a larger schmear, kvetching for a precise configuration of eggs and waffles "on the same plate but barely touching, just the corners."

To prep my guests, novices in the land of lox, I'd made jokes about the famed sullenness of the Rascal House staff. But lo and behold, our host was funny and charming and quickly found our huge party a great table, even grabbed us a last-minute basket of breakfast pastries, though it was technically lunch time and the switchover to the less fabulous basket of lunch breads had occured. Our waitress craftily helped me construct the perfect and most cost-effective bagel cyborg off the appetizer and entree portions of the huge menu. Where was the legendary rudeness? Maybe I'd been too long in New York and was confusing The Rascal House with Ratner's?

Meanwhile, at the next table, a woman in oversized sunglasses was becoming increasingly agitated as she talked to her waitress, her frowning face sinking in on itself like a Shar-Pei's. She was insisting on a foodstuff that wasn't on the menu. Finally the waitress exploded, "Do you think I have it and I'm hiding it from you in the kitchen? Do you think it makes me happy to deny you? Lady, if I had it, you'd have it!" She was the only waitress I saw lose it in a whole morning of customer idiocy.

Me, I was a waitress for one day, at Alan Dershowitz's kosher deli in Harvard Square. I couldn't hack it. So I admire the waiters and waitresses who can. Here's a few tidbits of wisdom I've gleaned from talking to them:

Remember that waiters are working for minimum wage, or "waiter's minimum," which is even lower. Most don't have the option of full eight-hour shifts. In a four-hour shift, a waiter in a classy joint could conceivably make $200 or more, but remember too that up to 30 percent of the tips collected are doled out to busboys and bartenders (and sometimes hostesses), and another 20 percent goes to taxes. Meanwhile, hungry and cranky customers whine...and the waiter has to be pleasant. He's the one who gets the abuse if the chef screws up. He gets to listen to customers' rants about politics, race relations, and social justice. He has to pray for tips.

Tipping is the waiter's lifesblood. Certain general rules apply. Women eating alone tip well. Larger groups of Ladies-Who-Lunch dicker, each insisting on paying only for her own food, someone always forgetting that she had a glass of wine or a dessert, and as a result, the group leaves not enough to cover the tip. Blue-collar men tip well. People who actually work in the restaurant or the hospitality business tip well. People on expense account credit cards tip badly. Canadians tip badly. (Restaurant worker joke: What's the difference between a canoe and a Canadian? A canoe tips!)

I ask us all, then, to think before we attack the waiter, before we fillet him like a seabass for all his perceived shortcomings. It's a tough job, and somebody's gotta do it. And the day I sat whimpering in the bathroom of a deli after a customer screamed at me because the pastrami sandwich was much smaller than the ones at the Carnegie, I knew that somebody couldn't be me.