Working in the restaurant business, I am constantly getting bombarded with excuses of why people shouldn't tip. They're either out of town or they come in giant groups (and sometimes just because they're cheap assholes). You can smell the non-tippers from a mile away, and I wish we could grat them all, but unfortunately, that's not the way our system works, but there are always some who are just worse than others and you can apply social psychology to all of them. First of all, there are the social loafers as described by, or the assholes who feel like they can get away with throwing in a dollar, maybe, if the rest of the group will compensate for it with their slightly better tips of two or three dollars. In other words, social loafers are the people who try to give less and hope the group will act as a buffer (Latane, 1979). For a waitress, this f***ing sucks! If you give me a dollar, I'm literally PAYING YOU to wait on you, assholes. Also, because there are a lot of you, I'm probably busting my balls to give you the best service possible and I expect a tip of at least 20%. Every now and again, I forget to grat the group, and it has bitten me in the ass hard. Like, $3 on a six-top, or a collective $15 on an 18-top (I almost cried on that one). So now, I try my best to always remember to add that gratuity because I earned your money the hard way, dealing with you and your group of asshole friends. Then, I think my favorite example of non-tipping comes from out of towners, ESPECIALLY during SXSW. People just assumed because they didn't live here, they didn't have to act like a human being because nobody would know who they were when they left and they had better things to spend their money on, like PBR and really lame shows. This is a prime example of a not-very-extreme version of deindividuation, or when people lose their individuality and feel anonymous so they feel as if they can get away with performing deviant and impulsive acts (Zimbardo, 1970). I know these people weren't looting or breaking shit in the restaurant (all the time), but they were acting like assholes because they would only tip two or three dollars, despite what the tab was when we're running around like chickens with our heads chopped off trying to give 300 people+ excellent service on top of being physically and mentally worn to hell. But it wasn't their town, they didn't know us, or feel any reason to take care of us. And for that reason, I say eff you, Southby-ers. Take home message here, tip your servers and bartenders. They pay their bills with your tips and work harder than the average human being to just barely get by. Truth.
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References
Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: Causes and
consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation,
impulse, and chaos. In W. D. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation,
(pp. 237-307). Lincoln: University of Nebraska.
The situations that you have described (along with my general lack of coordination and ability to multi-task) are precisely why I have never had a job as a waitress. My boyfriend has worked in this industry, however, so I have learned through his experiences about how awful social loafing can be in regards to tipping. Because of this, I tend to be more on the generous side when I tip at restaurants in hopes to combat all those people who suck. The problem is that many people don't really dedicate that much attention and take all these factors into consideration when leaving a tip. Hopefully if people start to realize and understand what its really like for waiters and waitresses (and that those tips are what they live off of), then social loafing can become less of an issue.
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