Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

OFFBEAT

Vegan finds dead mouse in bag of tortilla chips

Feeling hair in her mouth, a 16-year-old vegan from Partille outside of Gothenburg looked down to discover a mouse cadaver in her bag of tortilla chips.

Published: 14 March 2008 17:05 CET

“It was terrible. I went through the roof when I heard what happened,” said Thomas Sällström, the girl’s grandfather.

He arrived at his daughter’s house shortly after his granddaughter realized a mummified mouse was nestled among the chips.

“They were just sitting eating chips like you would on any normal Saturday night and then this happened,” he told The Local.

“She didn’t actually eat the mouse, but did get some hair in her mouth.”

The bag was purchased at local Ica Maxi grocery store, part of the same grocery chain plagued by a spate of recent food safety scandals. The chips, a type of natural corn chips, are manufactured under the Ica brand name.

Sällström has already been in touch with Ica, as well as food safety inspectors who are currently examining the carcass and trying to determine how it ended up in the bag.

“They gave us 1,000 kronor ($165), sent us flowers, and offered to pay for some psychological help. Frankly, I’m not impressed,” he said

The teenage vegan has been severely traumatized by the event. She now pours all her food into bowls before eating it.

As of Friday, nearly two weeks after the event, the girl was admitted to hospital with a high fever and sores in her mouth.

“The doctors aren’t sure if it’s related to the mouse incident, but she’s not doing well at all,” said Sällström.

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits.

SEE ALSO: What’s the tipping etiquette in Sweden?

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user).

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

Url copied to clipboard!