Well-regarded eatery Au pied de cochon is the target of internet jeers this week after advertising for cooks, to be paid $13.50 an hour. It’s being pointed out that McDonald’s is currently offering $15.00.
Updates from November, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Bixi had a good season in 2021 after a drop in business in 2020. Its bikes are now stashed away for winter,
Meezly
This season alone comprise almost 40% of my cumulative trips since I joined in 2017. This was mainly due to the Electric BIXI. They’ve been a game changer but also a bit addictive. At the start of the season, I thought there were too many of them, but they soon became a hot commodity. I just wish there was a better way to quickly charge them because they just take up space if they can’t be used!
mare
In an ideal world the Bixi stations should be electrified so they can be used to charge the electric bikes. Right now they don’t have power just a little solar power cell for the pay station. But since we now, after many years, know more or less where the stations are located, it won’t be too hard to make some sort of hook-up to a utility pole or a streetlight. And in the winter that power cable could be capped and hauled up on said pole so it doesn’t get accidentally hit by snow clearing equipment.
It would also be great if there would be some kind of kind of reward system — say a dollar off on your next ride or yearly pass— if you return your Bixi to a station that is like 80% empty. That would reduce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions by those trucks shuttling bikes back-and-forth between stations and might be cheaper too. A few less (unionized?) workers though. And electrify those trucks ASAP, if only for the image.
IIRC Velib in Paris has a reward system like that and I’ve never seen a bike moving truck / trailer.
DeWolf
When the electric bikes were introduced last year, I was pretty sceptical. And when they eliminated the $1 flat fee I thought I wouldn’t use them much this year. But they’re very useful for going uphill and they open up new routes I never would have considered before. I’ve gone from the Plateau to NDG by riding over the mountain and through Westmount (fun!), and when I’m in Old Montreal I use the blue bikes to go up Beaver Hall Hill, through the McGill Ghetto and up Park Avenue to get back to Mile End. Both trips would have been sweaty, exhausting journeys on a normal bike, let alone a normal Bixi.
My wife also uses the electric bikes to commute and at roughly $1.5 per trip, it’s way faster than taking the bus/metro and quite a bit cheaper.
DeWolf
Mare, there already is a reward system! It’s called Bixi Amis. You just have to enable it in your app. Without doing anything special I’ve ended up with about a dozen free rides over the course of a season.
I think you’re right about making some of the stations permanent. That will be necessary if Bixi sets up a winter network to avoid conflicts with snow removal.
qatzelok
@mare: “…Velib in Paris…”
And in Paris, the stations are fixed into the ground in central areas. Creating fixed Bixi stations in central areas of Montreal would allow for both electrification and winterization (so that they could be used year-round).
Kate
Paris’s climate is much milder, even now. Bixi probably has a pretty good idea how magané its bikes would be after four months of ice, salt and grit. I’m not sure we’ll see Bixi year‑round quite yet.
walkerp
Yes that’s an important factor. By the end of the summer, the bixis were pas mal maganés already. They need that winter downtime to get repaired and ready for next year.
Anyhow, really happy to hear of their success. Been a good year for support for alternatives to cars despite the pandemic.
DeWolf
Bixi’s annual membership is now a seasonal membership, April to November, which opens the door for them to create a winter membership that costs a bit more, to account for the extra maintenance required because of all the road salt. It’s definitely feasible, though, and I think there would be a surprisingly large market for it. The only reason I don’t do winter cycling is because of the extra maintenance and gear required, but if winter-ready Bixi was an option, I’d definitely take it.
qatzelok
I’ve been cycling all winter for 10 years, and Bixi’s geometry and tire width are perfect for winter. But the amount of maintenance required to keep the stations clear of ice and snow, as well as the bikes… is worth another 80 dollars for the winter season.
DeWolf
Marianne Giguère (city councillor who is the de facto bike czar) posted this on Facebook about winter Bixi today: “Des essais ont été faits et c’était concluant, mais c’est pas simple d’adapter la flotte et l’entretien à l’hiver, et c’est surtout très coûteux. Avec l’ajout progressif des stations permanentes pour la recharge électrique, ça va faciliter le maintien d’une flotte 4 saisons, ça s’en vient!”
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Kate
Ensemble Montréal is asking for four recounts in the municipal election, claiming there were errors in the counts of Côte-des-Neiges–NDG and Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles, also La Pointe-aux-Prairies and Loyola.
Adding the two recounts already requested by Projet, only 97 of the city’s 103 representatives will be sworn in on Thursday at the Palais des congrès, the other six to be confirmed later.
H. John
I expected the Perez challenge in CDN-NDG. There was around a 200 vote difference out of 32,500 votes.
The Loyola challenge is harder to understand. A 100 vote difference out of 7,413 votes.
Kate
H. John, does a party have to pay for the recounts? Or does a judge simply have to agree it’s not an unreasonable request for it to proceed for free?
Mark Côté
Both the district and borough races in CDN-NDG started off Ensemble and then quite a bit later tipped to Projet, so I bet that’s why they were singled out for recounts. As a longtime NDG resident who also lived in Loyola for a decade, it was a very exciting election.
H. John
Kate, the applicant(s), for example Perez (CDN-NDG) and Retta (Loyola) file a petition with the Court of Quebec. From the Act Respecting Elections & Referendums in Municipalities:
“263. The application for a recount or re-addition is made by way of an application to a judge of the Court of Québec of the judicial district in which all or part of the territory of the municipality is situated, filed in the office of that court.
The respondent is the candidate having the greatest number of votes according to the announcement made by the returning officer.
Subject to any inconsistent provision of this subdivision, proceedings are conducted in accordance with the rules of contentious proceedings in the Code of Civil Procedure (chapter C-25.01), but the application shall be heard and decided by preference.274. The judge shall award and fix the amount of the costs according to the tariff established by government regulation.
Where, according to the results of the poll certified by the judge, the candidate who received the greatest number of votes is the same as according to the announcement made by the returning officer, the costs of that candidate shall be assumed by the appellant.
Where the recount is applied for following a tie, there shall be no costs.”Whether or not to award costs is the choice of the judge. And if awarded, in Quebec, they are no where near what you think they are.”
Here’s a short paper by the late Patrick Glenn explaining the difference:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~purzel/national_reports/Canada.pdf
Kate
Once again, thank you, H. John.
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Kate
Christopher Curtis reports on the Rover that a woman was found dead in a condo construction site on René‑Lévesque over the weekend. Elisapie Pootoogook was in her 60s and had been living homelessly in Montreal for some time.
Later, CTV also covered the story.
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Kate
Valérie Plante has had her first brief discussions with Bruno Marchand, the new mayor of Quebec City. They sound optimistic, as far as it went.
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Kate
In a good sign for the suburb’s future, Repentigny has elected its first Black councillor following stories of difficulties between the town’s police and its growing community of Haitian-Canadians.
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Kate
The Jacques-Cartier bridge will be closed overnight Monday to Tuesday to motor traffic in both directions.
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Kate
As food prices rise, food shoplifting is also becoming more prevalent, although the claim in this piece that people steal meat then flog it to restaurants is incomprehensible. No restaurant owner is going to buy a risky piece of meat from an unknown crook in an alley. If people steal food it’s because they’re hungry.
Ephraim
I wish that people would learn to use more staples. Dried beans and rice, for example. So many people don’t even know how to soak beans anymore. Not that I buy that much meat, but the price of meat on sale is still good and knowing how to cook a particular cut to make it come out tender is key. (Though, I wish they would have a better price on whole chicken, often rotisserie chicken is cheaper than raw chicken)
Kate
Ephraim, it doesn’t help that terminology for meat cuts differs from place to place, so that a video made in the U.S. or in England will use different terms for different parts of the animal. And that’s not even considering the French equivalents. I’ve only found out a few rules for cooking certain cuts because I have friends with a trained chef married into the family, who’s taught them a few methods for cooking cheaper cuts so they turn out well.
Joey
@Ephraim there are two theories why rotisserie chickens are cheaper than raw chickens (especially at Costco). Theory #1 is that they’re a loss leader, like Costco’s hot dogs. Theory #2 is that they can convert raw chickens into rotisserie chickens just before they expire, salvaging a sale out of what would otherwise be wasted. Unsold rotisserie chickens eventually become soup. Is suspect there is some economy of scale action at work too…
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/652215/best-tech-gifts-2021?utm_content=infinitescroll1
Ephraim
@Kate – There are very few cuts of beef that can’t be cooked low and slow. Usually that’s what’s going to be cheap in beef anyway. Low and slow in the oven or in a slow cooker. Liquid, root vegetables, and lots of time.
@Joey – It’s a shame, because everything from the chicken can be used for meals, including using the backs to make soup. The skin to make schmaltz for cooking instead of oil.
Kate
Ephraim, you see, those involve an oven or a slow cooker, neither of which I have. It’s always tricky.
Well, there’s always lentils, kale and cold water.
Blork
A good dutch oven can be used stovetop for braising meat. (Just be very gentle with the heat.)
MarcG
Kate, you don’t have an oven?
Kate
MarcG, I have a very old stove in which the oven stopped working some time ago. I was about to get a decent used stove last year, probably from the same place where I previously got my decent used fridge, when the pandemic hit, and I put off major purchases. (The stove top elements work fine, it’s just the oven part that doesn’t.)
I do have a reasonable toaster oven which is fine for most things, since I’m not doing giant roasts or the like, but it isn’t an appliance I feel comfortable leaving on for hours at a time. Although it might be OK, I don’t know, but I’ve never used it that way.
Ephraim
A crock pot / slow cooker is cheap and very effective. This one https://www.amazon.ca/Crock-pot-Manual-Cooker-Stainless-SCV800-S/dp/B0196B3OJ2/ has an open box for $26.59 for the largest size. Great to cook beans or a roast or chili, cassoulet, etc. Just put it on top of the stove and leave it on low for hours on end. (You can also some upside aluminum plate on the bottom and use it for things like ribs, so the fat drips down.) The trick to slow cookers is that you add anything aromatic at the end, so they don’t get muddled in.
There is nothing like it and it’s likely one of the biggest budget savers out there. You can soak the beans in there, wash and then cook them in there as well. And yes, you can cook lentils in there as well.
dhomas
I know it’s kinda trendy right now, but my pressure cooker saves me loads of time. The meat comes out similarly tender to when I would use a slow cooker. So even the less tender cuts of beef still come out really well. I use to leave my standalone slow cooker out on the balcony all day or night cooking so as to not get the meat smell all over my house (and clothes). But I haven’t touched the slow cooker since owning an Instant Pot type pressure cooker. A whole chicken in the pressure cooker for less than an hour has the meat coming off the bone as if I’d left it 8 hours in the slow cooker. There’s a bit of a learning curve to adapt slow cooker recipes for pressure cookers, but it’s well worth it, IMO. They usually go on sale around this time of year (for Black Friday) for about 60$.
Kate
These are good solutions when you have counter space for appliances.
Also, with all respect to Ephraim, I don’t like beans. I will have to be really down to single figures before I turn to beans as a solution.
jeather
You can also get a combination slow cooker and pressure cooker, and I guess it could live in the non-functional oven. Though it you don’t think you need one, then why bother?
I wouldn’t buy a used pressure cooker but you can get used slow cookers everywhere.
John B
> No restaurant owner is going to buy a risky piece of meat from an unknown crook in an alley.
I’ve seen it happen where someone I know used to work. It wasn’t so much unknown crooks un alleys, but kids/adolescents that the small restaurant owner knew, who would grab stuff that they knew he could use and sell them to him. In this case it was usually chickens & cheese.
(If the police are reading this it was 15+ years ago and not in Montreal).
Kate
If I could cartoon, it would be a picture of the classic crook selling something illegally from inside a big overcoat, with steaks visible inside.
JS 09:25 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Oh please. Can nobody do simple arithmetic? Fancy resto: $100/person x table of 4 x low 15% tip = $60 per table. This is obviously without wine, and even $100 may be low. How many meals can be served in a successful fancy resto in a regular shift?
dwgs 10:41 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Also, as someone who came up working a trade I have to say that if they are hiring people with limited experience part of the deal is that there is still a lot to learn and they are investing time and resources in teaching the younger employees. In a sense you are getting paid (poorly) to continue learning your craft.
MarcG 11:01 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
JS: My first impression was that you were saying that a fancy restaurant grosses $400+ per table so why can’t they afford to pay a living wage to their employees… but then I realized you were saying that it’s up to the patrons, not the employer, to ensure their survival, nice! Tipping needs to end.
DeWolf 11:09 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Vices & Versa which serves a simple menu of burgers plus a few daily specials that are more creative, was hiring cooks this summer for $18/hr plus a portion of the service tip.
People argue that APDC is a renowned restaurant so working there looks good on a CV, but that’s a trap: if you accept a low wage for working at APDC, all it does is set you on a path of working at progressively more prestigious restaurants for shitty wages, until you’re a sous-chef at Leméac or Toqué and you’re still making less than $30/hr. Some life. There’s a reason people have been leaving the restaurant industry en masse and it isn’t because they’re scared of catching Covid, it’s because wages and working conditions are terrible.
DeWolf 11:10 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Also, the APDC ad made no absolutely mention of kitchen staff getting a portion of service tips. So JS’s math doesn’t really add up.
Ephraim 11:16 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Let’s remember that McDonald’s staff learns nothing but to push a button and listen to the machine buzz when it’s done. There is an apprentice value to what APDC does. Not defending the low pay, but they are as comparable as the food that they serve… APDC is a restaurant and McDonald’s is really a food service…. there is no real food being transformed from raw ingredients into a dish that takes hours to create. I also assume that like many places, the servers have to kick back to the cooking staff. But I’m sure that APDC could afford to pay a beter wage.
JS 11:27 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Oh I don’t know how the tips get shared around, but full time wait staff at expensive restaurants obviously do pretty well compared to their colleagues at cheap places. Can someone please demonstrate, by showing their math, how someone working at an establishment can be still scrounging after their measly minimum wage? Don’t forget that until not long ago tips were tax-free, at least cash ones.
And Ephraim is correct: processing payment and pushing the microwave’s “ON” button doesn’t qualify as “service” work so their minimum wage – all they’re going to get, unless they steal food – should be higher.
steph 11:38 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
I don’t see the fuss. Let them go under.
@JS, taxing tips has been the law for a long time. Undeclared cash tips, and blackmarket will always be a thing. Since 2013 all quebec restaurants had to have modern cash registers that make fraud more difficult. Auditors can investigate and estimate a tip revenue with all that information.
I personally think tipping should be abolished. I rarely go out anymore either and may kick the habit completely.
Ian 11:47 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Also worth noting even if there is a back-of-house tip-out the 15% tip calculation is off for a couple of reasons – first off, a lot of people don’t tip 15% on drinks, in France it is customary not to tip on wine (for instance) so a table of tourists might actually cost you money… because not only do wait staff get an extra low minimum wage as tip earners, but Quebec is the only place in Canada where tip earners have to pay 8% of their total sales as an advance tax at the end of each shift. If tips are less than 8% of sales the owner is supposed to fill out a form to get your rate adjusted but of course that never happens.
So basically if you sell $100 worth of food and $100 worth of drinks and don’t get tipped on the drinks AND you have to tip-out 10% of your tips to the kitchen you’re walking out with 6.5% of total sales + $10.80/h wages.
No wonder service in Montreal is generally terrible.
Uatu 12:06 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
This is standard practice for restaurants which is why it’s a mystery to them why nobody wants to work for them. After all, the owners went through the same drill of shitty conditions and lousy pay when they were starting, why shouldn’t the newbies go through it too? The problem is that the pandemic changed everything and it’s up to businesses to adapt or go under…
Kate 12:44 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Granted the duties at McDonald’s would be simpler, but anyone working at APDC would be held to a much, much higher standard, in fact a different kind of standard entirely. And would they not expect a minimum of ITHQ food safety training as well?
JaneyB 12:49 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
@Ian “Quebec is the only place in Canada where tip earners have to pay 8% of their total sales as an advance tax at the end of each shift.” Wow. I had no idea. What a disaster for wait staff.
John B 13:00 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Building on Ian’s calculations, this ad is for a back-of-house position, so a server sells $100 of food & $100 of drinks ad the table doesn’t tip on the drinks, and the server tips out 10% to the back-of-house, then the entire back-of-house, (all cooks & dishwashers), make $1 off of that table, which they split amongst themselves.
That’s why people are frustrated with this post.
jeather 13:03 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
“Oh, sure, we wrote 13.50, but we didn’t MEAN we would pay that, we would of course pay more. Not that we will change that amount! We’ll put a range in, with 13.50 as a minimum and 18.63 as a maximum while claiming that of course people earn more”
CE 13:27 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
I worked as a dishwasher at a very high end restaurant about 10 years ago and I was making 12.50$/hour. No tip out though but I was fed two free meals and got to take home leftovers. If they’re getting some of the tips at a place like APDC, they’re going to be doing ok, especially if they work the weekend.
Nick D. 14:29 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Martin Picard was on “Tout un matin” this morning discussing this. I didn’t get to hear the whole interview, I was running around getting the kids out of the house, but one of the issues discussed are the very fine profit margins for most high end restos. Interview is at 8h20 here:https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/tout-un-matin/episodes/584770/rattrapage-du-mardi-16-novembre-2021
thomas 16:22 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Love this thread. Business owners afraid to raise prices in face of rising costs. Workers become underpaid and overstressed. These are ..precedented times.
PO 18:28 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
I always hear people say they want tipping to be done away with, but the people who are loudest in their support for keeping tips are not the restaurant owners but the wait staff themselves. The local hole in the wall might have terrible tips for their staff, but I’ve known a few people waiting at fine dining places making insane amounts of money. 15% on an $15 breakfast is nothing, but 15% on a $75 dinner adds up. I’ve known people who left their Friday and Saturday shifts with $400-500 in their pockets each night… They admit it’s slower on other days of the week, but they liked it and it gave them time for a second job. Weird double edged sword. I don’t really care either way.
jeather 18:31 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
Yes, the very small percentage of people who are doing extremely well in the current system don’t want to risk loss, that is entirely normal.
Ian 22:43 on 2021-11-16 Permalink
300-400 in a fancy resto on Friday or Saturday night shift sure, but pull a Wednesday fternoon and you might walk out with 20 bucks in tips. The best places in other cities poolt tips so there is better service but you can’t even do that here as you are taxed on sales. It’s an awful system that devalues waitstaff and bar staff.
dhomas 08:56 on 2021-11-17 Permalink
Despite all that backlash, the job posting still hasn’t changed to anything higher:
https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/jobsearch/jobposting/35237353