Restaurants Add Mandatory Tipping for French Canadian Customers

Are Québecois bad tippers? Canadians that visit restaurants in Burlington, Vermont, got a little surprise when they noticed that they were being charged automatic gratuities when servers guessed that they were Quebec:

A few local servers even have a nickname for the surcharge: They call it the “Queeb tax.” [...]

Owner Sandy Kong says that while the restaurant doesn’t have an official policy, she lets servers decide whether to add a gratuity.

“If the Canadian customers were tipping at 15 percent, I wouldn’t let them do this,” Kong says of her waitstaff. But the Canadians are not, she alleges. On a single day last week, Kong says, one party left a $3 tip on an $80 bill; another left nothing for the server on a $90 tab.

Kathryn Flagg of Vermont's Seven Days has the story: Link

Is it wrong for restaurants to add mandatory tipping?



Yeah well first of all, not all French speaking Canadians are from Quebec, and I'm sure not all Quebecers are bad tippers.... and I disagree with any place adding an automatic gratuity no matter what the situation. Maybe if her wait staff works so hard she should pay them more to begin with.
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I hate automatic tipping! Places that charge a flat 15% on parties of 6 or more, stupid stupid people! My husband tips WAY more than 15% so they are just screwing themselves.
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A canoe tips more frequently than a Canadian. This I learned from my friend in Vancouver BC.

Just a small cultural peculiarity, like peanut butter on toast.

I guess Canadian restaurants pay a living wage to their servers? Eh?
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Automatically adding gratuity on groups actually is a good idea for servers. While some of you may say you always tip more than the X% added as auto-gratuity, not everyone does this! Besides, when multiple people are paying for a bill (especially if they're using both cash and credit card payments), it's easy for even well meaning customers to accidentally stiff the server.

Just because gratuity is on the check, it doesn't mean you're unable to add more! Feel free to add to it to equal what you normally tip.
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davelog got it right. Mandatory tip = surcharge. When did tipping become an expected part of their wages anyway? Maybe it's time the restraunt owners start to pay a decent wage instead of me paying them for the meal and then paying the person who brings it to me seperately. Oh and I don't need to work as a waiter. I already work in a "service to customers" type job and nobody ever thinks of tipping me.
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Sandy Kong gives a couple of examples of the tips left for her servers. Yet she doesn't say how good their service was. If you get bad service, by all means give a bad tip. If the service is truly terrible, don't tip at all. I always wonder why the server should get 15% when all they did was take the order and bring the food. I'm not saying that's nothing, but shouldn't the chef get far more credit than the server?
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I don't mind the surcharge if the place is good.
Her's the dilemma. Serving staff hears customers speaking French as they come in. Staff thinks, "Great. No tip for me today," and proceeds to deliver poor service. French customer thinks, "This is really poor service. I'm not going to leave a tip." (in French, of course).
Staff sees no tip and goes, "Just what I thought. A lousy tipper."
Catch-22.

I think the French are less "polite" (or more open) than other Canadians, and will definitely let their dissatisfaction show in their tipping, when another person may be more forgiving. However, I know examples of French people leaving pennies even when the service was good, or insulting the wait staff in French when they think the staff can't understand them.

I kind of like the idea of the gratuity being added on to the bill. In the Philippines, I didn't really have to worry about tipping, but sometimes left some of the change from the bill anyway.
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Haha I didn't know Québécois didn't tip (I'm a Québec decent French Canadian who has spend most of my life in not-Québec provinces. I speak the language but am not familiar with the Québécois culture). I live in Vancouver, and people tip here as a matter of course, regardless of service. I don't know where 'Blow and Dry LLC' got their information from, but I have a lot of friends here who are servers. Also from personal experience, everytime I've ever eaten out, I, or someone in my group, gives a standard gratuity. Perhaps people of different and relatively recent immigrant backgrounds don't. But if you are in sync with the local culture, tipping between 10 and 15% is the norm in British Columbia, Alberta, and the Maritime provinces (including the Acadian French parts of the Maritimes. Acadiens are a culturally and historically distinct group of French speakers connected to the Louisianna Cajun).

I do have a story from my friends who went to Australia several years ago. The waitress saw her tip and said to my friends "You must be Canadian" And they said yes how did you know? And the waitress told them that Canadians tip 15%, Americans tip 10%, and Australians tip nothing.
When I was in the EU part of Europe, we weren't expected to tip. We even tried to tip a friendly and helpful cab driver in Salzburg, and he refused it! But when we were in non-EU European countries it was the norm to tip. We ate at a restaurant in Split, Croatia where we left the tip on the table rather than in the cheque book. Since he didn't realize we tipped him yet gave us the most withering look of hatred.

I don't think it is fair to enforce a tip (in situations where is isn't expected. I feel differently if it is a large group. Usually you are informed of it from the start. Ex: "Since you are a group of over 10, there is an automatic gratuity of 18% calulated to your bill"). Obviously in Québec they have a different tipping culture. Maybe they generally tip less. Maybe they use it as a reflection of the quality of service. I think they can offer a printed suggestion on the bill in English and French that tipping X percentage is customary in Vermont. In English so they don't feel singled out. And in French since they appreciate their language being used and are prone to be less hostile when it is offered willingly, and for clarity if their English isn't strong. (<-- sounds like a typical resolution coming from a Canadian lol. My Trudeau-esque multicultural brainwashing is obviously showing.) If they still don't tip, that is their prerogative. It's their money.
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Great, now I can receive poor service and still have the priviledge of paying the server for it. I have not tipped servers and then let the manager know the poor service was the reason for the lack of tip. Leaving a poor tip based on poor service, makes a customer look cheap, not unhappy.
Paying the server based on sales, from the owner, encourages a higher table bill, thus higher total sales.
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