My mother was a great waitress. People would quickly step around other diners to grab seats in her section. No person has ever been more hardworking or more polite.

She was also extremely deferential. This highly capable woman regarded everyone as her superior. The customer was always right.

When I was old enough to work alongside her, I saw her smile time and again at rudeness that should have gotten customers bounced. Eventually, Mom and I worked at different restaurants. I chose to move to a place that served alcohol once I turned 18 (old enough to serve liquor back in the dark ages), because that made tabs — and therefore, tips — much bigger.

Working at a luncheonette, I had been on a receiving end of flirtation from male customers. The lubricated libido is much bolder. Men said horribly inappropriate things, sometimes in front of their wives. I’d move away from the table as quickly as I could. I did not believe that the customer was always right, but the customer determined my income.

Then, as now, workers who are routinely tipped were paid a sub-minimum wage. Today, waitresses in Connecticut make $6.38 per hour, less than half the standard minimum wage. The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour, as it has been since 1991.

Connecticut’s General Assembly is once again considering requiring employers to pay everyone minimum wage, regardless of tipping. Restaurateurs are arguing that their business model will not allow this. If you can’t pay your workers a living wage, you need to change your business model. Yes, there are times when servers make way more than minimum wage. There are also snowy nights when restaurants stay empty. There’s the time we spend refilling ketchups and cleaning counters.

[RELATED: CT lawmakers propose nixing tipped minimum wage — again]

But most of all, there is vulnerability to abuse that comes from relying on tips.

I was 19 or 20 one Sunday when a group of a dozen or so came in, an extended family, I believe. Men, women, kids. There were two middle-aged men in the group who asked me questions about my bra size, my sexual likes and dislikes and so on. I ignored them. No one else at the table objected. Nor did anyone react when these fellows reached out and grabbed my behind at every opportunity.

They rattled me. I dropped two prime rib dinners, which sent the restaurant into peals of laughter. So many years later, I can feel a prickling in the back of my neck and a churning in my stomach just thinking about it.

Birthday gifts were opened and the family departed, most of them anyway. The jerks stayed behind. It was almost closing time. No one else was in the front of house. The cooks and dishwashers were in back blasting the music and buttoning up the kitchen. I was trying to clear tables while giving a wide berth to my remaining customers.

Then the one with the mustache came up behind me. He grabbed my breasts and thrust his pelvis at me over and over. I knew the kitchen staff would help me, but I also knew that they could not hear me scream.

This is how it happens, I thought. All those nights of walking to my car with my keys laced between my fingers. Now I am going to get raped, just for showing up to work.

To my surprise, he let go, joined his friend, then the two sailed out the door laughing. I cleaned up my section and went home. But this is not the horrible part of the story.

This is: Less than a week later, Saturday night, those two men returned without their family. They sat in my section. If I had told the chef or manager what they’d done, the pair would have gotten the boot. But my section was chock full. Saturday nights put gas in my tank and food in my stomach. I could not afford a disruption that might hurt me at other tables.

There are few things I deeply regret in my life. This is my largest regret — that I did not tell them to go to hell. Instead I waited on those predators. In a crowded restaurant, they were much better behaved. They did not touch. They only leered. And I put up with it. Because I could not risk a Saturday night’s worth of tips.

That’s why the tipped minimum wage is a ghastly thing. You must depend on the whims of strangers to make a living. For the largely female workforce who rely on tips, that makes them vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse.

It’s not okay to force people to put on servile performances to make a living. It escapes me why the legislature is still struggling to understand that.

Colleen Shaddox of East Haddam is co-author with Joanne Samuel Goldblum of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty.