Marriott hotels launch envelope campaign to get guests in the habit of tipping maids

[laundry_queen]

65. I spent my high school years as a chambermaid

The stories I could tell...

NO ONE ever tipped us except the Japanese tourists. We would get so excited if we got those rooms. We would get a loonie (Canadian $1 coin) under each pillow in each room. That was huge to us at the time. Our supervisor tried to rotate the rooms so that everyone would get those rooms at least once during the tourists' stay.

Lucky for me, they paid above minimum wage at the time ($.60 more an hour) because the were out of the city with no bus service, so few people wanted to work there. Recently, I took a look at the same hotel to see what they paid - 1.5 times minimum wage now. A couple of dollars an hour below what I made in an entry position in accounting (with a degree).

I definitely don't think tipping should be a substitute for a living wage though. When companies advocate this, it definitely makes me wonder. But for those who stay in hotel rooms often - most of the women I worked with were very poor. Tipping would be a huge help to them. I was lucky because I was a HS student, so I just needed money to pay for my car insurance and gas (for my $500 car, lol) and save for post-secondary so the wage wasn't horrible to me, but I bet it must've been super difficult for those women to live off that wage.