NYT: Why You Should Tip More Than You Do Now

[Omaha Steve]

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/why-you-should-tip-more-than-you-do-now/

By TONY SCHWARTZ JULY 11, 2014 11:11 AM



The average pay for a housekeeper runs $7 to $9 an hour.Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

For most of my life, I’m ashamed to admit, I didn’t leave a tip for the housekeeper in the hotels in which I stayed. My wife always did, but I somehow didn’t pay attention. Only recently did I wake up to just how little these folks earn and how exhausting their jobs typically are.

Any person who puts in an honest day’s work ought to be paid a living wage. The average pay for a housekeeper runs $7 to $9 an hour, according to Glassdoor.

That’s not a living wage. Even working 40 hours a week, the average housekeeper’s annual income falls below the federal poverty line of $23,850 for a family of four. The same is true for millions of retail and food service workers and others in a range of low-end jobs.

I’ve written before about the evidence that paying employees better and treating them better translates into lower turnover, better service for customers and higher profits. Still, most employers have been woefully slow to make this connection.

FULL story at link.

[benld74]

1. My past business travels I ALWAYS left tips for the maid service

I still tip more than the average eating outside the home. This will never change.

[onehandle]

2. I've tipped more and more as the years pass. Most people think a dollar is a substantial amount.

Truth is, a dollar now is like a quarter 15 years ago.

For example, in the 90s I would tip a pizza guy or a valet a buck or two. Now I fish out three to five bucks.

Housekeepers work a lot harder than those two guys.

[randys1]

3. $10 minimum, more sometimes, even if i cant really afford it

and there are some homeless looking types I dont wait for them to ask me for money, i go to them and give it

not to youngish, healthy looking people, they can usually figure out where to go for a meal and so on

(not bragging, trying to get others to do it too, so we have to talk about it_

but older, or confused types...

sometimes we have interesting conversations, sometimes it is about implanted chips the govt put in their head, but that is ok too

[hollysmom]

4. Well, I certainly have been lost inthe past, I do $% a night.

I did go on vacation with some people last year and later as we were driving home, one of the other people gave me 5 dollars and said "you left this in the room". Well we were hours away, so I didn't say anything,but sheesh, some people never travel.

[Warpy]

5. Most of us would so much rather have workers get paid enough to live on

so we wouldn't have to traverse the minefield of who gets tips and how much. Paying more up front would be OK, we have to pay the same now when we add in the tip.

Before the late 70s, only restaurant workers needed to be tipped, everybody else got enough pay at the tail end of the New Deal to keep body and soul together.

Wages have never been allowed to keep pace with inflation because the 0.01% have decreed that paying people enough to live on is inflationary.

I think it's time to bring out the guillotines. My knitting is ready.

[SheilaT]

6. My standard hotel/motel room

tip is $10.00. I am amazed at the people who never leave money for them, or who think leaving a buck or two is enough.

Last night there was a large group of us (14) at a restaurant. We were a noisy, cheerful bunch, and at the end more than one person said to everyone, "Be sure to tip generously." I left ten dollars on a thirty dollar tab.

My younger son does pizza delivery for a living, and he can do okay, but is often stiffed. The worst, he tells me, will be at the end of a school term when he'll be delivering a very large order to a school and get no tip at all. Sometimes a school delivery will get a good tip, but most of the time none or a very small one.

[brewens]

7. My first boxboy job at a grocery store we weren't allowed to accept tips. Generally people

out west where I live didn't tip boxboys anyway. Once in a great while you'd get a customer that evidently had lived where they tipped and would do so. I didn't pay any attention to the rule and always said than you and accepted. It might have only been 50 cents or so back then but I really appreciated that.

You have to really piss me off at a restaraunt to get stiffed. More likely if the service of food wasn't that great, I'll leave the minimum and not come back If happy, I'll always go 20%, more often than not rounded up to the nearest dollar.

Does everyone usually tip for a haircut? I do. I think it gets me squeezed in when I call for an appointment on short notice.

[kcass1954]

8. Always tip on the haircut.

Both of my sons tip $5 on a $20 cut. If they go on Tuesday, which is $15 cut day, they still tip $5.

And here's my tipping story:
I have very short hair, and it grows fast. I have it cut every 6 weeks. When I started going to my current hairdresser 5 years ago, it took exactly 2 visits to realize that this was going to be a long-term relationship. I started tipping her $10 on a $42 tab.

Fast forward to 2-1/2 years ago, the retailer changed their pricing policy, and my cut went down to $36. For about 7 seconds, I entertained the idea of lowering the tip to $9. I decided against it for several reasons - (1) service didn't change, just the price; (2) 10 is such a nice round number and it's a lot easier to hand her a ten than a five and four singles; (3) honestly, I can swing the extra buck; and (4) I didn't ask her, but I wondered if they also reduced the amount that they were paying her. So I continued to tip $10 on a $36 price.

(Did I mention that I give her $50 every year for Christmas?)

Early in 2013, this retailer resumed their old pricing policy, and my cut went back up to $42. She knows my husband had just retired and we were making some adjustment so our spending, but was glad that I figured out how to juggle in my hair. The first cut after the price increase, she went to the counter when my hair was done, and said to the cashier, "I don't care how you do it, but her hair is NOT $42." I now get a "hair cut express" for $32. Guess how much I tip? (Hint: I'm nothing if not consistent.)

[CTyankee]

9. my hairdresser started her own business but I still tip her...

I was uncertain as to what to do when I followed her to her own salon, but her receptionist asked me if I wanted to add something to the $50 charge for my hair cut...that indicated to me that a tip was expected, so I added $10 as I always had.

Typically, I tip 20% at restaurants. In hotels it is usually $1 per night but I think I'll raise it to $2 per night. I'm not often in a hotel domestically. My travel is primarily in Europe and with a travel company, where mostly hotel help tips are included.

I pay my house cleaners $75 for two hours of cleaning twice a month and I give her an extra $75 at Christmas.

[modrepub]

10. 16 rooms a day

I just read that's the number of rooms housekeepers in Atlantic City said they did a day. I'll try and use this number to figure out how to tip next time I'm in a hotel room. (I may need to increase my $2/night rule).

[Iwillnevergiveup]

11. I think service employees

are shy about speaking up because so many people tip nothing or minimally. Especially in the hotel area. Last year I stayed at an Indian casino in Wisconsin and learned the maid who cleaned my room actually lives there at the hotel because she doesn't have a car to get to work. The husband and kids join her on weekends - he needs the car all week to get them to school and him to work. The casino deducts rent from her, and she told me very few people tip her.

But another cool thing to do in hotels is indicate no sheets change necessary if you're only checked in for a couple of nights.

[TBF]

12. No. Employees should be paid a decent wage

by owners so we aren't all paying their wages for them. I always tip at hotels, restaurants, hair salons, babysitters and all the holiday bonuses etc ... but it is ridiculous that employers are allowed to pay employees a very low wage with the expectation that the consumer must make it up. I call bullshit on that. It's time for owners (some of them very very wealthy) to have to step up to the plate and actually pay their employees. Talk about deadbeats expecting a handout ...