Anyway. Besides the classic Americans vs. Canadians rivalry illustrated above (e.g. “and they were canadians!”), I don’t think your problem is Canadians. I think it’s tourists. If a tourist, no matter where they’re from, knows they will never, ever come back to this establishment, they might be tempted to not leave a tip, since revenge is practically impossible. I don’t agree with this, but I think it makes more sense than the “Canadians don’t tip” undertone that was running in some of these posts. It’s just tourists.

Remember, we’re Canadian. We’re real f*ckin’ friendly. Heh.

I mean, “Eh.”

Some stories of intellectually enacting revenge from a server friend of mine who works in a dessert/wine/coffee restaurant:

-A guy orders a latte, he gets it and proceeds to talk to his date for 45 minutes! before drinking said latte. To his shock, his latte is cold! He stops my friend and says, “Miss, my latte’s cold”. Her reply was (and genuinely) “I’m sorry, was it cold when you got it? or…?” Man: “Um…no” Her: “Ok, but it’s cold now?” At which point the man realizes the futility of his statement in getting another latte out of her and just gives up.

-Some one gets an alcoholic drink at the table, waits until they’ve drank all but a few sips and then complain to my friend that they didn’t like it, would like something else, etc. And her trying to be the best server she can be wants to know what’s wrong so she can do her job and fix it, right? (And again, this is all in the genuine delivery) Her: “So what was wrong with it? It’s seems like it was really good up until that point…”
Or a similar situation with a dessert complained about with one bite left. Her: “You didn’t like it? I’m sorry. It seems like you had a really hard time holding off on that last bite though.”

-Lady tries to be passive aggressive about needing something. My friend asks if there’s anything she can get the two ladies at the table, if everything’s okay, etc. They say they are fine. My friend is still at the table… Lady to her friend in a hushed annoyed voice: “I wish I had [insert whatever she wanted- napkins or sugar or more dressing or something] though”. My friend is still there! She asked if you needed anything! If you need something you can just ask her instead of complaining to your friend and making a snide comment! My friend: “You know, again anything you need I can get for you. You know, I’m here to serve YOU so if you need anything, anything at all, all you have to do is just ASK” (All with a great big smile on her face”. The lady wanted to speak to her manager- her argument was “She told me she could get me whatever I wanted. Anything!” Needless to say, it didn’t hold any clout.

But as long as rude and asses are concerned, I just break out because I work for my uncle’s restaurant and can do pretty much what I want. Most of the time, customers behave better once they get a piece of me. Some of the regulars, after getting drunk, would come up to me and apologize about how they behaved few days back.

A very funny thing happened. I was serving two tables, both booths. One of the tables was being all crazy for not giving them a bigger plate, which I should have, but I had forgotten somehow. But instead of asking, they just started shouting and I made a whole story about what they were eating was an appetizer and we give out smaller plates for appetizers and also lied about the free rice when it came with that particular food. I got all mad and shouted at them and they, instead of getting more mad, started apologizing to me. But the funny part is, the other table I was serving also, was witnessing all these. It was very uneasy to suddenly turn into a smile mode but I did anyways. I was all smiles for that table while all frown for the other one. Afterwards the decent table had tipped me 40% and I just started bursting out laughters coz I really thought they got the impression of not messing with any of the servers though they didnt do anything wrong. But I was sure the rude table would leave couple of bucks but to my surprise, they tipped a little over 15%. Thats why I love my job. If I dont like a customer’s behaviour, I let them know what I think about them. But if the diners are nice, I do my best to give them a service worth the money. We dont even serve ice screams but when nice costumers request one, I will pretend that we do serve ice scream and get it from the next door store.