[whisps]

Not to defend the attitude/behavior of the employees, but I can share my perspective as someone who has managed a small food business that repeatedly used Groupons (because they worked for us, despite what I'm about to describe).

There was always a large minority of Groupon users trying to get the rules bent/broken in their favor--so for example, the Groupon they purchased might say "Only useable Monday-Thursday, does not stack with any other Groupon, coupon, promotion, or discount" and then they'd come in on a Saturday and try to use their Groupon with another discount. When we'd explain why that wasn't possible, they'd complain, hold up service for other customers, and/or write negative online reviews. This happened pretty consistently over the course of 2 years and 3 different Groupon deals we had.

However, we were not a restaurant--we sold pre-packaged gourmet sweets--and so none of our employees depended on tips to get paid. We also had high profit margin on our goods, so we still made a good amount of profit with the discounted Groupon prices. Additionally, despite the above-described behavior happening consistently, we had even more Groupon users discover the place for the first time, and then become returning and loyal customers.

So Groupon worked out for us, but I think it's because we had a pretty unique situation.

[zippergz]

I've also noticed a pattern in which a large proportion of the negative reviews for some restaurants (which I know to be good from my own direct experience) mention groupon, and others don't mention groupon but have very similar complaints. I wish Yelp would let you just exclude reviews from people who used groupons because their experiences and/or expectations seem to have nothing in common with mine...