Don't yell at waitresses. You look like a jerk and it blows investments.

I know people who work in retail, and suck people exist. There are not a massive proportion of society buy even a bit of a percent is a lot of people overall. You would might that people out for a nice relaxing meal, or shopping in the middle of a holiday, would be pleasant to deal with: but you'd be wrong. I know a number of people in retail and I can tell you (through indirect experience) that the general public can be unrealistically demanding and completely unpleasant if their demands are not met, repeatedly, yesterday.

By way of an anecdotal example: I know someone whose father thinks there is nothing wrong with clicking his finders and yelling "BOY!" at a waiter to get their attention. Except in Italian places - there it would be "Luigi" rather "boy". I bet he consumes a lot of spit when he goes out for a meal...

For many reasons many people out there are dicks. I might well be one of them if I'm honest with myself, though not one of the worst by a long shot. And if you work in retail or catering you are likely to meet far more than your fair share of them. Remember: most workers in a shops or restaurants deal closely with far more members of the public in a day than most of us encounter closely enough to notice in a year.

I take it you've never worked in a restaurant ... there are plenty of such people.

Don't ever deliver Pizza. Its like COPS but with more yelling and less clothing.

Its an opportunity for those without much self esteem to exercise power over someone that can't fight back without significant loss. Only dumb people piss off the people handling your food, but there's a big overlap between these two groups.

it happens daily in china, it's the norm--it shows who's boss and if you don't do it, you ironically don't gain respect. maybe the angel investor lived in china for a long time? :)

this is an excellent anecdote, lucky the waitress f'd up.

I'll wager you're in teens or twenties. Go to restaurants long enough, you'll see it.

Oh come on, it's _not_ about having people "remember who slighted them".

It's about not being a dick.

Most people understand this just fine - you don't be a dick to the CEO or the Venture Capitalist because you're not a dick. You don't be a dick to the waitress or the janitor because you're not a dick. It's pretty easy.

_Some_ people though, have to work hard at not being a dick to the investors 'cause there's something in it for them, and don't bother working hard at not being a dick to waitresses. The only reason they have any trouble with it is because they _are_ dicks.

And as the article and a lot of these comments point out, other people _do_ notice.

While that's a good quote, it's not quite relevant for people such as waiters. In my experience, being polite and tipping generously regularly gets me a speedier and more pleasant service. Sometimes it won't make a difference, sometimes it will make even more of a difference, such as a free drink or two, but more often than not it does have a positive impact on the service you receive.

That's true not just with waiters, but in many service situations - for example, in Oxford (a fairly small city with fairly low numbers of taxis required) a lot of the drivers know me, and when I call for a ride it takes a taxi, in my experience, roughly half the average time to arrive, simply because the drivers on duty know that I will be a pleasant customer and a good tipper.

Getting better service shouldn't be a neccesary reason to treat people well, but it's certainly a nice bonus.

..and the brilliantly insightful but ironic quote:

I don’t hire people who have to be told to be nice. I hire nice people.--Leona Helmsley

Trying to dig up the source for this quote leads to quite an array of people it's been attributed to! So far I've turned up variants sourced to: Abigail van Buren (the old name of "Dear Abby"), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a Reader's Digest letter-writer named James D. Miles, and Malcolm S. Forbes. Most of the attributions are questionable, though (e.g. I haven't found anybody actually pointing to where in Goethe's works such a quote can be found).

In case you were curious of a source, this link cites Ann Landers as the author.

http://quotationsbook.com/quote/40407

Expanding on that, you can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its least valuable members.

That's really no excuse. Don't go on 2-3 hours of sleep a night if that means you can't treat people around you with respect. Or, at least, don't venture out among people who don't understand and appreciate the situation you're in.

A lack of sleep creates stress. There are a lot of other ways to create stress. Time pressure, money pressure, conflict, disappointment, home life, and embarrassment all create stress.

When getting into business with a partner, you need to know how they will deal with stress. If this person does not deal well with stress when faced with a little sleep deprivation, especially over something as simple as coffee, then it's a huge red flag.

Imagine that it's crunch time, you're all running on minimal sleep, and you're trying to get a demo perfectly solid so you can either get your next round of funding or sell to interested parties; i.e., there's a lot on the line.

Do you really want this type of person shrieking at everyone in the room because they're not typing fast enough? Do you think that's going to help you and the team?

I can honestly say I've never been rude to a waiter, taxi driver, shop assistant... etc.

And I certainly wouldn't claim to abide to a higher than average moral standard, I've been rude to my friends and to people I dislike. But not to my colleagues, not to strangers and not to people working indirectly for me (i.e. waiters etc.)

It is quite possible that in the future I might be rude to a waiter, but that would be the exception, not the rule. So yes, it's possible that if you judge someone of a single incident you might have caught the one in a thousand occurrence, chances are against it, far more likely is that you're seeing their normal behaviour.

i agree, feedback is king for those that want to improve. delivery of feedback though requires practice.

When I was younger all the grownups would offer advice like "Don't choose an immature name like Goat Butt to use online. No one will ever take you seriously." Remember that?

I'm glad you're dedicating yourself to proving them wrong.

I never did figure out that it was a coffee cup, but for some reason I really enjoyed staring at it. I'm still not sure why.

Looking through the rest of your blog, the visual design is really well done, in an understated way. If you felt like expounding on this sort of thing, I'm sure you'd find an enthusiastic audience.

I spent about 5 seconds puzzling over why the graphic was there. I'm not sure what I think about that. On the minus, side that''s 5 seconds I will never get back. On the plus side, it built tension that I was probably able to use to read the article. My words apply only to people who are new to your site because of course after a reader has seen a few of these designs, he or she will not have the puzzlement reaction I had.

As just money, it would be horrible. As a whole package, it's basically the standard for incubator, quite successful, and has a great oversubscription ratio.

It's more of a "don't go telling people" thing than a "now that it's on Hacker News everybody will know" thing.

@jschuur Don't you think the investor will take the easy way out and not shout at people when discussing investments, but not actually change as a person?

I think these type of behaviors are deeply set. They can be changed, but I think it is more likely that the investor learns to be more subtle when discussing with an investment target, rather than actually becoming a nicer person, which requires a real change of character.

Too subtle. Easy for him to think it's fine to treat a waitress that way and that he can still function with 'real people'. He needed to be reminded that this is a sign of a fundamental character flaw.

Not to rub it in, but on the chance that this might lead him to redemption.

I'll agree that saying "better safe than sorry" is probably the wrong way to view life, but taking what other people say with a grain of salt lets you question what people say more and come to your own decisions about life.

Also, "people suck" includes yourself, so you can think about it as a way to think about what you are saying and doing and see if it is up to a level of quality that you are comfortable with.