http://abcnews.go.com/Business/burlington-vt-restaurants-add-gratuity-foreigners-bills/story?id=17076167The last time it happened the France-born Humbert, her husband, Steve Hulsey, and her nephew were eating at Splash at the Boathouse, and speaking French.
At the end of the meal they glanced at the bill and wondered why it was so hefty. Then they realized that an 18 percent gratuity had been tacked on--common for parties of five or more, but generally not added to the checks of smaller groups.
"Three times in less than a year I thought, 'There's something going on here,'" Humbert, who lives in neighboring Williston, Vt., and has been in the states for 30 years, told ABC News. "It was not a mistake."
So she asked the server why the tip was added on--and was told it was because she had been speaking a foreign language. Burlington, which is less than 100 miles from Montreal, gets a large number of Canadian tourists over the summer. "They explained to us that they get pretty bad tips from people from Quebec and Europe, and that they had a policy to add gratuity to get what they needed," she recalled.
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Throw a tip amount on my bill and you run the very real chance of me paying absolutely nothing but the cost of the meal. The "tip" that you will likely receive is a polite note informing you that a gratuity is something that one person gives another person out of the generousness of their heart, not some amount to be extorted by a money-grubbing weasel.
Before you get your panties all wadded up, I know how hard most servers work, and how little their "salary" is, as well as the games that are played with requiring them to split (declared) tips with cooks and buspersons - both of which receive at least minimum wage.
Most of the time when I eat out it is in the company of a friend or two or twelve, and we tend to linger over the meal for conversation. We stay much longer than the "usual" customer. Therefor, we do not so much tip as we leave "table rent" - at least three and sometimes as much as five times the "usual" 15% . A few servers that go out of their way to accommodate us normally receive the amount of the bill as a tip - because we think they are worth it.
I don't know about Vermont, but in Virginia the amount that a restaurant adds as the "tip" cannot legally be enforced. One poor server learned that the hard way by getting arrested for false imprisonment when she locked the door on us and called the police because we left only 10% as a tip, instead of the 15% indicated on the bill. She became even poorer when we took back the amount that was left as a tip. And poorer still when she had her day in court - charges were reduced to "curse in public" because we agreed to that if she got her hand seriously smacked. $100 fine and 6 months probation seemed about right to us. Never mess with a bunch of curmudgeonly old men!
So - if you are faced with a specific gratuity already computed on your bill, how to you respond? For the sake of discussion, let's say the amount is higher than 15% of the bill.
stay safe.
