“Our Docent…” gave and outstanding tour and she wouldn’t take a tip. These volunteers do it for the love of their city”. Trip Advisor
If you have been perusing the kudos we get online, you will see some mention of our not taking tips as part of the praise of our tours.
The no-tipping policy has been in place since April and is in the Policies section of the Docent Handbook. It reads:
- CAF docents are prohibited from accepting tips. A CAF docent should never solicit or encourage tipping.
- If offered a tip, a docent should respond, “Thank you, but we do not accept tips.”
- If the guest persists, be gracious and politely but firmly repeat that we do not accept tips.
Despite this clear statement, there are still docents who accept tips and solicit tips.
For these reasons, the Standards Committee with the unanimous support of Docent Council has established the following enforcement guidelines:
- If offered a tip, a docent should refuse the tip in a friendly manner.
- A docent observed accepting tips from guests will be issued a warning for the initial incident.
- If the same docent is observed a second time accepting tips, s/he will be suspended from the right to give tours for a length of time determined by the Standards Committee.
- If the same docent is observed a third time accepting tips, s/he will be terminated from the docent corps.
- An appeal can be made to Docent Council within 60 days after the Standards Committee has acted on the infraction and informed the docent.
Both Standards and Docent Council are aware there are times when it is impossible to refuse a tip and they will be sensitive to this issue. If a tip is foisted upon you, please email Constance Rajala or Caroline Duda so that they can proactively alert Standards, then donate the tip to the Docent Council through Caroline Duda, Erin Carlisle or the current Docent Council Treasurer.