I ran into my pal Crazy Jack while I was picking up some batteries at Radio Shack and together we wandered into Coco's for lunch.

Crazy Jack is a restaurant guy, the type of man who takes his meals out, mainly because he has no cookware, and no desire to cook.

On the way in, Jack grabs a newspaper out of the stand and we are soon seated. He reads aloud (very loud) from the front page, "Minimum Wage Proposal Defeated," and then he continued while the waitress poured our coffee. "The U.S. Senate, today, rejected by a 56-42 margin a 1,400-page bill that would have raised the federal minimum wage and reduced the federal estate tax."

Crazy Jack dropped the paper and yelled at the waitress as she walked away, "AHH..could I get some honey for my coffee over here!" He went back to reading aloud.

"Currently, Nevada, California and Washington are among seven states where workers get to keep their tips on top of getting paid their state's full minimum wage. A provision in GOP-written minimum wage legislation passed by the House but now voted down by the Senate would have dealt a pay cut of $3 or more an hour to thousands of waiters, bellhops and hairdressers in those states."

The waitress came with honey packets and Jack lowered the paper again, glanced at her and raised one eyebrow at me.

Crazy Jack has a minor reputation with the local food servers, and while the clever ones can joust with him, the more timid ones usually avoid him.

"The purpose of the provision was to allow employers with tipped employees to count their employees' tips as wages for purposes of meeting their minimum wage obligation." Jack dropped the paper and feigned a look of consternation, "Does good advice still count?"

"Not yours," I told him, "and don't try to be funny...your waitress may accidentally drop your chicken fried steak on the way to the table."

Jack stirred a big glop of honey into his cuppa joe and picked up the folded paper again, "This provision would have allowed management to slash workers' wages by counting tips against their salaries. This would bring service workers' wages down to around $2.15/hour. The tip deduction would have hit about 120,000 Washington State workers who depend on tips-a $950 million wage hit. The Washington Dept. of Labor said the federal law would have trumped our state law prohibiting tip deductions."

"Ah..the minimum wage was too high...and tipping is overrated anyway," Jack mocked as our girl breezed past.

If anyone is an avid supporter of eatery workers, it's Jack and he loves to reiterate to anyone who will listen that the last time he ate a meal at home was during the terrible ice storm of 1996. ("No power for 11 days...I had some left over MREs..still ok, still tasty!")

When she came to take the order, Jack continued to joke, "I'll have whatever you can bring me that doesn't weigh too much...I wouldn't want you to break a nail."

He grins up at our girl. She gives him a rehearsed chuckle reserved just for yohos like Jack.

I order my sandwich and Jacks keeps it up, "What does the term 'tips' stand for anyway?"

"To Insure Prompt Service'..right?" Our waitress excuses herself with a "be right back" and Jack shrugs, "Whad' I say?"

Jack quickly pointed out, "Man...when I was in the Army, I learned that whenever you got your check at the local bistro, the tip was already added to the bill!"

Our server returned and stared at Jack, pad and pencil ready. He orders and then says, "Man...that doesn't fly with me...that's like having breakfast on a cruise ship."

"If the service isn't any good, I tell 'em, 'Here's a tip...Get a better job," he said.

And with this he guffaws so loudly the booth shakes and our coffee cups slop over.

"Back in the seventies, I'd never give more than ten percent." I cornered Jack here, "But you were so bad at math, they usually made out like a bandit."

Before we had drained our coffee mugs, our girl came with the food and Jack began to back pedal.

"Hey..I'm just teasing you...you know that, right?" She smiled and lightened up a bit, but I could tell that she already had Crazy J pegged. The food was hot, my cup never lacked for coffee and I paid the tab, telling Jack that, since he was an expert, he could get the tip. He folded up a ten spot and tucked it under the ticket.

"Just so she won't get the wrong idea about Old Jack," he said.