Some recent tip happenings, at the restaurant:

1) My one (new) (tall) (skinny) (Chinese from China) coworker tells me as we fold silverware, "I have to admit, I am from China, but I become afraid when I see two Chinese students at a table."

2) At a four-top that's (three) (South Asian) people including a (identically matte dun-brown-skinned) (very South Asian) (older) (couple) where the (skinny) man has glasses and is (balding with hair combed across the top) and the wife is (the same build but a little plumper) and in a (crisp white-and-bright-green-patterned) sari, as well as their (mildly horse-faced) (long straight-haired) (slow-speaking) daughter and a (cleancut) (blocky-headed) (Chinese?) guy that she's apparently dating, they order 3 entrees for 4 people, hold off on maybe ordering an extra rice (they don't), and they ask for extra glasses, for the specialty sodas they brought with them  -- namely, tamarind and pineapple Jarritos, brought in in a little white plastic shopping bag.

"Let's play a game," I was like to my one (new) (tall) (Thai) coworker, "How much tip do you think they will leave?"

Then, when she wasn't sure, I was like, "Twelve percent," and then she thought, and she was like, "Ten percent."

Then, we told our one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phone about the game, and she was like, "I have to go one direction or another," and then she thought some, and finally she was like, "Fifteen."

Later, the bill came and...  It was almost exactly fifteen percent!

"You won, you won!", we were like, to her.

But, she didn't seem pleased. 

"I thought low too, but you went first and I had to go one direction and I pick fifteen," she was like.

. . .

(Interestingly, it was the [cleancut] [blocky-headed] [Chinese?] boyfriend who picked up the bill and paid, even before the meal finished he came up to the front counter to grab it, to head off it coming to the table and the parents paying, so, to be honest, I don't know how that affected things.)