I don’t know if it is universal, but many of my friends who are (or have been) waiters or waitresses use this code word while working. For some reason black people don’t tip well, but it’s not PC for the staff to complain about it. So instead of saying “tonight, none of my black customers left a tip” they would say “tonight, none of my canadian customers left a tip.”
The sad thing is, even the black waiters and waitresses call the black patrons canadians.
This is VERY true.
This has been a code in restaurants for years. It is derogatory only in the sense that it lumps every African American together as a group that doesn’t tip. In no sense did I ever get that it was meant as an equivalent of the N-word. In NJ we have a large Indian immigrant population and folks from India are known to tip poorly. I have heard them referred to as Canadian too. Likewise, you might hear this used to refer to the Jewish couple who left $5 on a $60 tab. These stereotypes are no doubt offensive to African-Americans (or Indian-Americans or Jews) who tip well. I wonder if there is an element of sef-fulfilling prophecy involved, ie. the server expects the customer to be a poor tipper and hence gives less of their attention to the table in question and hence get a lesser tip. Still, I think there is some truth in the generalizations. Even the best servers I’ve worked with, who would never alter their service based on the ethnicity of the customer generally get lousy tips from Indian families, even when the customers seem extremely happy.
For years, we Canadian have been told that we are bad tippers, but we aren't, so all this time, I didn't understand the rumour.
LOL!