Give me your money, not your love. (Or your life story..)

Working in a big gigantic restaurant like Captain Rigatoni's definitely allows one to see a huge melting pot of customers. Unlike where I used to work, where 90% of business was driven by locals at Capt Rig's 99% of business is made up of tourists.
This is a rather interesting dynamic, and certainly brings a lot of variety and non English speaking people to the table (haha). Here's the thing about tourists though- either they are out and about having the time of their lives and throwing cash around like it is their job, or they are really cross because their vacation is costing them so much so they hold on to every dollar as tight as possible. This brings me to a very good point- if you can't afford to tip (or claim to not know how **ahem** French Canadians) stay home and have a cup of Ramen!
At work the other evening I had a good variety of people, all in different moods and situations. Things started off poorly, with a table of 4 non english speakers. "No English" they declared as I told them the specials "No French" I replied, sighing sadly to myself. Things went fine, they pointed at what they wanted (they read English? I don't know) and gestured vigorously for more water and pretty much ran me around. As expected, they left me something like an 8% tip, and I'm sure that they felt that was going to pay my 2 mortgages just fine and dandy. The good thing about the foreigners is that they do not demand too much of my time, at least from a conversational perspective. Some of the more local tourists love to tell me about their kids, grandkids, travels, psychic friends, medical maladies, horrible divorces, you name it- it's fair game to tell the waitress. If I'm really bored on a slow night I quite enjoy these little exchanges. However! If I am running around in a full house of starving people I do not have time to hear about Grammas run in with the hostile postal worker.... After spending serious bonding time at a table, sympathizing and offering an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on I really think it would be acceptable to add a few bucks onto my tip. Seriously, I do not need your love but I DO need your money! Show me the love with a few $20 bills y'all and I'll be more than happy to listen to you talk about your granddaughters cat's hernia operation or about the run around that your evil ex husband is giving you! But, when I spend the evening being your shrink, BFF, and partner in crime to stiff me with a 12% tip is offensive.
There are the tables that you know you are fighting a loosing battle with even before they order their drinks. Very Angry Women make up some of these customers, and Couples Who Are Fighting make up the rest (we have already touched on the Non English Speakers, so I won't bring them up again.) Very Angry Women are ticked off at their waitress before they even lay their eyes on her. They might be slightly less angry with a charming waiter- or not, depending on how mad at their cheating Ex-es they are.... Nothing you do for VAW is right, the wine list will be sadly lacking their favorite brand of White Zinfandel, the table they are at will be too small, too large, or too dark, you will be unable to fulfill their insane requests for specificaly prepared foods (containing ingredients that the restaurant does not even stock.) They will snip and snap at the waitress, make underhanded snide remarks and complain predictably about the temp of the food (too cold! too hot! it was hot when I started eating but it is COLD NOW!!) They will not be pacified in any way and will leave a 10% tip, a big mess, and the feeling of hatred in their servers heart. Couples Who Are Fighting are something like a ticking time bomb. They come in all pissed off at one another, and manage to make the life of their waitress uncomfortable at best. Usually nothing on the menu looks good to these people, a direct result of the fact that nothing in their relationship looks good either. If the wife (or girlfriend) is mad at the husband (or boyfriend) she will almost definitely become defensive if the husband speaks to the waitress at all. "Leave that poor girl alone" she will hiss, when he has the gall to ask about the soup of the day. (but to be honest, I have seen some in-trouble husbands attempt to flirt with the waitress, which results in justified fury.) They will bicker passive aggressively throughout the meal "you don't even LIKE salmon" "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I LIKE!!" and will leave angrily before dessert but after leaving a suitably poor tip. To match the poor quality of their looooove.
It is a ton of fun to get all of those bad tippers together in one place and to get them all seated in your section during the same evening. Throw in the guy who sends back beer #1 "too warm" then beer #2 "too cold" and you might be left feeling that the world has gone insane!