Tipping has been a bone of contention for years. Depending on where you are, if you’ve received some sort of service, a tip may or may not be expected. However how much you should tip, if you should tip at all, has been “the” conversation for years.
It doesn’t help that different countries have different views on tipping. For better or for worse, the U.S. is a tipping society. However if you go to Japan, a tip can be considered an insult. Meanwhile, if you go to the U.K., you may tip a little bit (read: a pound or two, or perhaps “round up”) to some service workers, but not all of them.
This has a great guide to international tipping. However even that may not always work because there are some people who think certain people shouldn’t be tipped. Or that tipping has gone “overboard.” Or whatever.
Take housekeeping, for example. Unlike restaurant servers and bartenders, hotel housekeeping make an hourly wage that’s supposedly not based on including tips (Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13/hour because it’s assuming the person will make up for the rest of their pay in tips). That amount varies from state to state, but starts at the Federal minimum wage of $7.15 and maxes out at in the “high teens or “low twenties” per hour. Salary.com places typical hourly wage for housekeeping at between $12 and $14 per hour. Not exactly a living wage in today’s times.
When the person is someone who has to clean up some really disgusting stuff, including just about every bodily fluid out there (I mean, would YOU be willing to clean up other peoples’ sheet stains, toilets, curly hairs in the tub, etc.?), and I know they’re not paid particularly well, I’m willing to tip them.
I also tip more if I’ve somehow left a particularly big mess (Story time. The only person who knows about this is Joe. But we’re friends, so I’ll tell you, too. When we went to the Freddies in 2022, I over indulged at the amazing fries at one of the best Tiki bars on earth on the night before we checked out. However eating too much fat is never a good thing for me. The night is a blur but it may or may not have involved one or more “explosions,” if you will, in our hotel bathroom. I think I remember using every towel in the room, recommending they replace the shower curtain, and leaving $25 on the bed. Or something like that. Or maybe it was all just a nightmare, I dunno. I’ve tried to block it out).
However some people think they don’t have to tip because they only do so for exceptional service (or when there’s been an inadvertent Code Brown in the bathroom; although some people might not even tip THEN. Those people suck). This is where Dear Abby steps in.
Dear Abby was the pen name of Pauline Philips ever since she started the column in 1956. Her daughter, Jeanne Philips, began writing the column with her in 1987 and took over entirely by the early 2000s, after it was revealed that her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dear Abby has given replies about all sorts of topics. Aging. Etiquette and ethics. Family and parenting. Friends and neighbors. Holidays and celebrations. Work and school. Loving and dating. Money. Religion. Teens. And yes, travel.
Waaaaaay back in 2011, someone wrote to Dear Abby asking for advice about a 2-part question about hotels. Part of the question was about towels and whether or not they should be replaced on a daily basis for re-use (you can tell this was 2011 – they got housekeeping every day, towels being replaced every day was the norm, etc.). But the other question was about tipping when the writer thought housekeeping wasn’t offering the service to deserve a tip.
Here’s the exchange:
Dear Abby: My wife and I recently returned from a vacation where we had a disagreement regarding hotel service and towels.
Regarding the towels, my wife thinks we should hang them to dry daily for reuse later. I say the cost of washing the towels is included in the price of the room, and I want a fresh towel daily.
The other issue is my wife feels obligated to tip the housekeeping staff. I have never felt that obligation. Not a single housekeeper has been exceptional, regardless of the hotel we stayed in.
We’re hoping you could shed some light on hotel etiquette.
West Virginia Traveler
Well, if *I* were Dear Abby, I’d tell them that housekeeping certainly DOES deserve a tip, simply because of having a low paying job, providing a service and what they have to deal with (see above sheet stain and Code Brown situations, as starters). “Exceptional” service has nothing to do with it, although there’s nothing wrong with starting with a base (say, $3/night) and increasing the rate of tip based on level of service, the same as is often done with a server.
Dear Abby had a different twist on it. Here’s what she said to West Virginia Traveler:
Dear Traveler: Your wife appears to be a conservationist. Although you prefer fresh towels daily, many travelers voluntarily forgo this service to help hotels conserve water and save energy. If you prefer to do otherwise, that’s your privilege — and it’s not worth arguing over.
As to tipping the housekeeping staff, has it occurred to you that you have never received exceptional service because you never offered a tip? Some hotel guests talk to the housekeeper at the time they arrive to request extra hangers, soap, washcloths, etc. — and offer a gratuity at that time. And when they do, the staff usually goes out of their way to be accommodating. Try it — they need the extra money, and they’ll spoil you if you let them.
Dear Abby is a cool lady.
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3 comments
My Mom was a hotel maid and I know the hard work she did. The tips she received from guests were passed along to me and my younger brother. In my adult life whenever I stay at hotels I make it a point to say hello to the housekeepers and leave them a generous tip at the end of a stay. I taught my adult children to do the same when they are hotel guests.
Here’s a question I’ve heard answered both ways: Do you tip every day or just tip once at the end?
Now that there isn’t housekeeping service every day at most hotels, I have begun leaving money out each day and a note indicating that it is for housekeeping. If someone cleans the room that day, they get the tip. If they don’t the tip stays on the desk until someone does clean the room. Then I leave a tip at the end of my stay.
That’s what we’ve always done. If you stay for a week and leave a week’s worth of a tip on your last day, it could be kept by someone who only works 1 or 2 days a week, while the person who cleaned your room for most of the days (assuming they worked 5 days a week) would get none of it. So we always left a daily tip, for whoever cleaned the room “that day.” Nowadays it’s like you said, whenever they clean the room, that’s when they get the tip (and if it’s our last day, which will require more work, and they haven’t been there in a few days, we tip more, accordingly).