Is it a ‘thank you for prepping my room’ or ‘please clean my room today’? If you tip post cleaning, it’s likely going to someone else the next day. Many hotels now only do housekeeping on demand. How do employees feel about this - do they miss the tips or are they happy for a less stressful workday?
ETA- I’m in the US. Does the rest of the world tip housekeeping? I always have when traveling because I do at home, but I don’t know what the norm is.
My dudes in North America really have the most unstructured social support system.
Don’t look at us. I’m north american and have been in hotels plenty of times and have no clue what this dude is talking about.
Tipping people or not tipping people isn’t what’s perpetuating the system. Those who do tip aren’t at fault, it’s the ownership class exploiting workers so hard that they’ve delegated even their one, most basic duty off onto the customer: paying their fuckin employees.
You still have a 20% tip at restaurants, it’s insane
The 20% is relatively new. It was always around 10%, and then restaurants started “suggesting” higher tips on the receipts, and basically guilting people into tipping more. It was pushed up to 15% in the mid '00s, and then only pushed up to 20% during Covid. I have been called a piece of shit human on multiple occasions because I didn’t buy into the restaurants randomly changing it on me. There is immense social pressure here around tipping.
The restaurants have a financial motivation to want the tips to be higher, so I feel like it’s a conflict of interest for them to be suggesting the tip amount. I think the government needs to get involved and regulate tipping or even outright ban it at this point, because restaurants aren’t going to stop pushing the envelope at 20%.
The company has gotta compensate for inflation somehow, right? They dont want to actually pay their employees, no no no, that would cut into profit. They have to make even more money so they push it onto the customer. Agreed honestly fuck this shit.
I went to a restaurant last month that automatically places a 20% tip on your receipt.
But if you pay by card like I do and don’t read the fine print in the bottom of the menu front page like I do, you end up giving a 15% tip and then finding out about the 20% tip after you’ve accepted your food cost+ 15% on their stupid little tablet. And of course I’m not going to make a big deal about it. I’ll just never come back.
That’s exactly it. We recognize the failures in the pay structure and try to help people in the service industry, but it’s gone completely overboard. A couple of dollars here and there is one thing, but 15-20% in a nice restaurant can be $50 and that seems ridiculous. If we stop tipping, we’re only fucking the worker. We need for more restaurants to advertise that they pay a living wage.
Never tipped housekeeping at hotels for standard, other then change that I didn’t want to take on a plane ride. Travel in the EU, Asia, Americas.
For longer stay places at non-hotels, I have tipped for service outside the standard level. i.e. extra towels, change sheets every day, do laundry
My thinking is - if tipping is required, it should be in the room price. Plus business travelers don’t have a ability to expense house keeping tips (unlike food tips which are normalized in US expense reports)
I was about to say, for work trips I absolutely can’t and don’t. I’m not paying for it, I probably don’t want to actually be whenever I’m at anyway. I might for exceptional service on a holiday or if I want quick service again but never do as a standard.
No, not in Europe. People get paid for their work here.
I was surprised when I first heard about workers getting tipped regularly in america. It’s crazy.
Tipping housekeepers is not the norm. You shouldn’t feel obligated to tip, ever.
The 15% of a meal thing never made sense to me either. Does it take any more work to carry a $60 steak to a table than it does a $15 steak?
It’s not My job to pay some company’s employees a living wage when I don’t even make a living wage myself.I feel that way about bars - expensive wine is not harder to open than cheap wine. Had a fight with my husband about it because he once ordered a VERY expensive drink and then started to tip 20% on it.
In the UK a few pubs have started the “how much would you like to tip?” When you pay by card.
When I see that, it’s always the last pint I buy from there.
Tipping is not customary here. People tip if they think the service is exceptional or they might “buy the bar tender a drink” if they want to build a relationship as a regular. I’m not OK with this shitty American culture creeping in.
if your getting the same service at a place that charges 15 vs 60 a steak that’s pretty bad. it’s not just carrying the food.
It’s a percentage because the $60 steak was assumably at a nicer restaurant where you received more in depth service.
Fine dining servers may only have a couple of tables at once, or even for the entire night. You’re paying more for more individual attention.
It also scales in reverse. A server on a shift with a $10 blue plate special will probably have 10 tables before things go off the rails. They’ll also put serious work into getting your ass off that table the minute your plate is clean.
If I tip I generally do it based on the work/effort rather than the price.
The reason why restaurant tipping is usually percentage based is because the level of service expected scales with the price of the items on the menu. The expectations on servers in fine-dining is a lot higher than a neighbourhood pub and so is the price.
I don’t tip at hotels, ever.
I’ve never heard of tipping housekeeping at hotels, why would you do that? They get paid by the hotel
Because it’s a shit job with minimal pay, physically demanding, and the hours are usually cut in the off-season.
While it’s nice for the employee to get some extra bucks, tipping only supports minimal pay for the job because “they’ll make up for it in tips”.
Not tipping only punishes the victim, not the employer.
In pretty much every other country, you pay once and the worker gets paid from that.
It’s pretty much only America where you pay once for the food and then again for the service because the employees wage is so horrifically low that they can’t survive with out your direct subsidy.
Earning enough from your hourly rate/salary isn’t a punishment, it just simplifies the process and removes the need for the “how much do we tip” conversation.
If you think the service was exceptional, you can still tip, it’s just the difference between rewarding great work and tipping out of obligation.
The problem is that people in this thread are in the mindset that tipping encourages lower wages, when in reality, low wages encourage tipping. The US has an absurdly low minimum wage relative to the cost of living, and that minimum wage of $7.25 has an exemption for tipped employees who can earn as little as $2.33 an hour. While it’s true that many states have higher minimum wages than the federal wage, there are several that are the same as federal.
I live in the US and I have never tipped housekeeping, nor have I ever heard of someone doing it.
Same tbh and I’m in the US. I didn’t realize it was a common thing until I heard about someone doing it one day.
Sorry, but I only tip people that make a tipped wage like servers. I do not tip hotel staff. Many hotels have stopped servicing rooms every day unless you specifically request it anyway.
I don’t tip housekeeping normally.
This should hardly be a controversial norm: tip because you feel like it, period.
I personally don’t want anyone going in my room while I’m there. I thought covid finally changed this when hotels started only doing housekeeping between customers, or if requested, but unfortunately it seems like they are changing this back. It just seems like a waste of labor to have someone else make my bed.
I’ve never tipped people going into my room. I’d do it if I made a mess or something, though.
When you check in, just tell the desk that you don’t want housekeeping sitting your stay.
I sometimes leave out the do not disturb sign and then just grab fresh towels at the desk.
Tipping isn’t a thing in my country, to the extent that if you left money lying around your room it would most probably still be there when you got back.
Unless maybe you were staying somewhere that gets a lot of tipping tourists.
it would most probably still be there when you got back.
What country is this
New Zealand.
Yap, +1 on my bucket list.
Cool, hope you make it here one day! Which country do you live in?
Along side the serengeti
Ah that’s such an interesting part of the world! Do you live in Tanzania, or Kenya? I would offer to do a temporary house swap but I don’t own my own house yet.
Do you live in Tanzania, or Kenya?
Tanzania
In EU I travelled for work for 10 yeara and i never used the small safe in the room, always left laptop, iPad , phone, wallet out. Never got robbed by the staff
Yes. I tip regardless of how long my stay is. I leave money on the dresser or table when I check out.
On multi-night stays I tip if I want anything special, like extra coffee, or when my drunk friend destroyed the toilet. The only time I tip when leaving the hotel is if the housekeeper did something above and beyond normal expectations. Like when my wife started early and soiled the sheets. Left a note apologizing, a $20, and just expected fresh sheets. Nope. She replaced all the bedding and the mattress too. Left her another $20 and a thank you note when we checked out.
I was a housekeeper and most Asian folks leave a toonie on or around the pillow everyday in canada it was really sweet
American here. What’s a toonie?
$2CAD coin
I don’t even let them in the room. Housekeeping left the door to my room open once for the entire day. I was across from the elevator. Thankfully nothing was stolen, but ya know, fool me once
