when to tip hotel maids

[calimac]

Slate's advice columnist deals with people who claim to have never heard of leaving a tip for the maid. (There's another one on the second page.) Are they serious? I can't remember not having heard of the idea.

The big question, though, is: when to leave the tip? Slate says just once, at the end of your stay, and that's what my mother does, also. I, though, follow the practice preached by science fiction conventions, which always advise their clueless nerd attendees to "Tip housekeeping every morning, not just on the day you check out, because you may have different service staff on different days" (quote from issue #2 of the newsletter of this year's Worldcon). Slate acknowledges this fact, but says, "I once asked a maid if they prefer to get the tip daily or when the guest checks out. Since maids are not supposed to touch money, she said at the end, which could mean that the woman who cleaned your room most of the week may not end up with the tip." So, tough for her, I guess.

I'm not sure I follow this argument. If maids are not supposed to touch money, then how do they pick up the tip on the final day? With gloves they don't wear on the other days? And if they're not supposed to touch money on the previous days, why do they almost always take the tip? (Once in a rare while I'll stay somewhere they don't; the last such occasion was at a small, rustic roadside motel four years ago.) And if you're not supposed to leave a tip daily, then why do many hotels now leave a daily envelope for it? At the Mythcon hotel in Albuquerque, this envelope had a form printed on it to leave requests for the maid. On the first day, we wrote, "Extra pillow and towels, please." The maid took the tip, but didn't bring the goodies. It was an inadequate hotel in many ways, but we kept leaving tips.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I leave the tip every day and use the hotel notepad--I write "For Housekeeping" on the top sheet and put the money between it and the rest of the pad. I've never had housekeeping not take it!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between maids touching money when someone is staying in the room vs. after they've removed all of their personal belongings. I can see the sense of a "don't touch money" rule, though I've never had a problem with a maid taking the tip, and I've never had a problem with the maid leaving loose change that didn't look like it was intended as a tip firmly in place.

I don't remember ever seeing an envelope for maid tips (or requests). Interesting.

I tend to leave a daily tip; I regularly spend time in hotels with someone who leaves the tip at the end of our stay.

[jane-dennis.livejournal.com]

If those ppl are non-North American, it's possible they're not familiar with our tipping norms. Otherwise, they're ignorant jerks, and probably vote Republican. I can cite many examples from my days of active participation on Flyertalk.

The "end of stay" tipping goes back to an era of much more leisurely travel when the staff who took care of you were pretty much guaranteed to be the same over your stay. I'm sure you know that, but it does explain why the "end of stay" advice persists. I certainly grew up with that as a paradigm, but in the US it's really outmoded.

It IS interesting that in the eastern US, leaving a tip in the bathroom is fine, and I'm not sure I recall it ever being misunderstood. Out on this side of the continent, the norm is different, and money left in the bathroom is usually not taken. On the pillow (as instructed by the SF con nerds guide) Does usually work.

In spite of spending several thousand nights in hotel rooms in the past 30 years (srsly - Scott and I have spent over 3 years of our lives in Marriott hotels alone), I still do worry about tipping. I LOVE countries where one doesn't tip, although so far only Japan is the only one which really means it.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I always have said to tip the maid, no doubt following the days when I was a maid and a tip could easily double how much you got for doing a room. Used to leave them at the end — still do if I don't remember sooner. I prefer to leave a note, usually "for the maid" or maybe just "Thank You!"

In China they seemed to mean it about not tipping the maids, so we didn't.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

My mom was a waitress; my mother-in-law spent years as a hotel laundress. I can't imagine NOT tipping, and heavily.

The do-it-everyday system does seem much more congruous to how we live today, not to the Victorian servant model (thanks for that explanation, btw; I'd always wondered how the idea arose).

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I only heard of leaving tips for hotel maids maybe 15 years ago, and I didn't find out from convention literature.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

I leave a tip daily, and exercise my rudimentary Spanish by leaving a note in that language. I read of tipping daily in a travel section of a newspaper decades ago, and it made sense to me. Good for Worldcon for mentioning tipping in the program book!