Public tolerance is an important factor of civil servants constraint mechanism. This paper, based on the quality of the grass-roots civil competency model and the “zero tolerance” concept, uses questionnaires to explore the current situation and influencing factors of public tolerance to the quality of the grass-roots civil servants defect. The first research that studies on 1 022 persons shows the public’s tolerance to the qualification defects of grass-roots civil servants consists of five dimensions: tolerance to capability defects, tolerance to bad attitudes, tolerance to moral deficiencies, tolerance to corruption and tolerance to low achievements; different demographic variables have different effects, but there is no difference for the gender factor. The second research on 476 respondents shows that people have a relative higher tolerance to capability defects, but lower tolerance to corruption; influencing factors of public tolerance are harmfulness, plasticity, universality and discipline of the qualification defects of grass-roots civil servants and its direct connection with public interest. In the end, this paper puts forwards some suggestions as to constructing a social and ethical environment for improving the qualification of grass-roots civil servants from the perspective of tolerance.