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Comment by erikw | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to share some anecdotes from my experiences as a waiter.

1. The people who demand the most service ("This is too cold, take it back", "Bring me a different fork, this one has a spot on it", etc) tip significantly below average, and sometimes not at all. This pattern is present just about everywhere- I see it in IT all the time.

2. Groups, especially business meetings, are the highest tippers. Serving a table of 8 isn't significantly harder than serving a table of 2, yet groups usually still tip based on percentage.

3. People who use coupons are universally small tippers. I also suspect that folks with coupons are not likely to be return customers.

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More anecdote from another ex-waiter: #2 was the complete opposite at the one place I ever worked, serving 8 people was much harder than 2.

The variation in sentiment might have to do with that my restaurant didn't have runners, and it was an Indian restaurant. We did food delivery ourselves, and customers needed at least two things to come for dinner (an entrée, and naan), making it stressful because once a table got to 6+ people, you had to run two massive trays of food from the kitchen to the floor, as quickly as possible.

#2 I find interesting. I thought that the reason for autograts on large parties is that they tend to tip lower overall?

Although you do seem to be phrasing it in a money vs effort angle than just the money.

From my experiences on the eating side, I'm not surprised that business meetings tend to be large tippers. Everyone is (usually) having a good time on the company dime and the tip is other people's money anyway. The problem with a group of individuals--specifically where everyone is paying for themselves--is that some people often don't end up chipping in enough and after a couple rounds of "we're a bit short here" the waiter ends up eating the shortage.

Even if it doesn't happen a lot, the effect on the waiter who makes 5% off the group of 25 they've been serving all night can be considerable.

Yeah, I was focusing on the group angle, not the business angle.

Yeah- the money per person is lower, but a lot of the effort of waiting is in managing tables- ie, the entire table usually pays a bill at the same time, and then the table needs to be cleared and prepped for the next customers.

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