A housekeeper at a Marriott hotel is complaining that all of her tips are being stolen. Guests are asked to tip, but the tips aren’t making it to the person who cleans their room. Instead, this employee says, their manager keeps going room to room to pick up the money before housekeepers enter, “she would race to get in my rooms before me to check if they were “vacant.”
This manager “only works Monday through Friday” and housekeepers never receive tips during the week. Only weekend guests tipped, it appeared. So they set a trap.
One day she wasn’t supposed to work and we were really busy. I saw her coming down the hall my way. She was “checking rooms” so I quickly put 3$ in one of my rooms that I hadn’t marked vacant yet.
I watched her go in the room and leave. After she left I went in and sure enough the 3$ was gone. This was the confirmation I needed. She had been stealing my tips for MONTHS.
The hotel’s general manager, identified as working for one of about 18 Fairfield Inn properties in Minnesota, backed up the reported thief. He blamed “one of the guests” even though the door had been locked and according to hotel video surveillance, the manager had been “the only one to go in that room.” They said, ‘not enough proof’ and the general manager told the housekeeping manager who had tattled on her.
Hotels say that encouraging tipping saves them from paying higher wages. All that matters is that the employee gets more money, and that helps with retention. It doesn’t matter who does the paying.
Tipping is out of control. We now get presented with an option to tip even at airport self-checkout and at self-serve hotel breakfast buffets. At the Austin airport I was asked to tip when buying a water from a machine that was programmed not to accept $0 as an input. Soon we’ll be tipping AI chatbots. But when we tip we should at least expect the money to go where it’s intended.
At least when tipping is done via QR codes in rooms there’s some electronic record of the tip. It may still ultimately benefit the hotel in lower wage costs, but individual housekeepers who are expecting some average level of tips will be less likely to get shortchanged.
This also isn’t the first Marriott property that’s had trouble over tipping. San Francisco Marriott Marquis was found to have illegally kept $9 million in tips. In California, service charges that customers believe are tips belong to workers. That’s the same hotel which gave away a guest’s luggage to a thief, and fought in court to avoid compensation.
“Oh, goodie! The peasants are fighting among themselves!” —Oligarchs, as they steel billions from our public funds and resources, while distracting us with culture war nonsense.
That is like ebay. Once I had an item to sell. Ebay insisted that it was a prescription item even though it was not. The manufacturer’s website said so and they sell it without prescriptions. Ebay would not budge. I later got rid of it through Craigslist.
The reddit thread disputes this article’s claim of the SF Marriott taking $9M in tips. The thread says it was not housekeeping. It had to do with charges at a banquet.
I leave tips under my used pillows. Hope housekeeping management hasn’t caught on.
Nothing surprises me about this.
Years ago on a European trip we left our room and then realized we had forgotten something- As we walked up to our room the manager was exiting. Sure enough, the tip we had left for the housekeeper was gone. For the rest of our stay we sought out the housekeeper and handed our tip directly to her. I wonder how often this happens.
This has happened to me as well at a Hyatt Regency in Mexico City. I left the room for the elevator, noticed I forgot something and walked back only to see the supervisor walk out of my room while the tip was gone.
@1990,
The oligarchs are now managing Fairfield Inns?
Boy how the mighty have fallen!
In less than a month no less.
You can’t be serious
Pay your employees properly and tips suddenly stop being an issue.
Everyone is blaming Marriott but also remember that close to 90% of US brands (Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG etc) are managed/owned by third parties. At the end of the day the Brand gets the blame but we should also call out the management companies running the hotels as THEY are the ones at fault and in many instances are responsible for employee wages.
@Steve: At Marriott, it’s 70% are franchised or licensed. At Hyatt, it’s less.
I was at a hotel in Fairbanks Alaska. Put a tip on my bed, went shopping and came back before Hotel checkout time. My tip was gone. I brought it to the attention of One of the housekeepers around the floor. Hopefully the person who took the tip was outed.
DO NOT TIP!!!!
You want a better wage, fight for it with YOUR Employer and NOT your customers!!!
Perhaps you might consider asking your employer for an increase in your compensation if you can’t make ends meet on your current salary. Or do like the rest of us and look for a better job. I’ve reached the point of this…. You’ll take what I give you or you’ll get nothing at all. I don’t accept guilt trips, snarly comments, stink-eye looks, or public shaming just because you WANT more. Enough!!!!
@Jay Gee
*whoosh* Yeah, you know me, suggesting the ownership class is literally working/managing the hotel… NOT.
My dude, BOTH the housekeeper and the ‘boss’ in my attempt at satire above are ‘peasants’ fighting over mere crumbs.
Meanwhile, it is the Musks, Bezoses and Zuckerbergs that exploit their workers, consumers, and public resources through regulatory capture, a subservient corporate media that promotes culture war nonsense, and more recently by direct influence and actual control of our literal government (in the US, and increasingly around the world).
Sure, worry about those tips, though. Speaking of, how’s that ‘no tax on tips’ going, anyways? Oh, it was a lie, too. Darn. The con-man lied yet again.
Simple: Place the tip under the soap dish in the bathroom. Only management and bellmen do not move the soap dish!!
Can’t really blame the ‘manager’, blame the idiots that keep tipping at hotels.
I worked at a hotel years ago where this happened. A supervisor was entering rooms first thing in the morning and taking a portion of the tips (sometimes all). It all discovered because a guest left an expensive ring in her room and was told it was not found. The guest was adamant that it was there and made a huge fuss over it (rightly so). After about 3 or 4 searches it was finally ‘located’ in a tissue box. But upon reading the lock access history it was discovered that a supervisor had been in the room prior to the room attendant assigned for cleaning. This led to other lock histories being checked and we found the pattern.
If you want to tip and want the tip to go to the housekeeper, tip in cash directly to the housekeeper. That has always worked for me.
Tipping is stupid. They already make above free market wages for unskilled labor. Just do your job and if you don’t like it then get an education. Tipping made sense when the tipped wage was below minimum wage, but those days are long gone. Tipping is now basically just virtue signaling for terrible people to try to feel good about themselves.
@Mantis
You’re alive! We’ve missed you. Oh, c’mon now, ‘unskilled’ isn’t very kind now, is it? I mean, I’d say flight attendants are quite skilled, though we agree that tipping on flights is odd, and not something any of us want to become normal. But, please, if you need a wheelchair at the airport, please hand ‘em a fiver if they’re with you for a while. Or, even a ‘nice’ bartender at the UnitedClub—sure, maybe just a dollar or two, but that’s mostly so they serve you swiftly when you come back for seconds and thirds. Treat others as you want to be treated, amigo. Is that ‘virtue’ or self-interest?
Now I know it wasn’t an isolated incident: I’d left a tip in the room at the Querencia de Sevilla (Marriott Autograph), came back to pick up some forgotten things, and discovered that the tip was gone while the room was still unmade. I asked the front desk how it could have happened, and they said they’d investigate. Disturbing!
Love the comments that claim that it is not the franchise owners not the chain that is at fault. McDonalds would never permit franchise owners to sully their brand name.
A similar situation happened to us at a hotel in Waikiki where we had an extended stay.
We always leave a tip with a thank you note for the housekeeper. We were suspicious whether our housekeeper at that hotel was actually receiving the tips because the housekeeping supervisor went to each room, knocked and entered, and marked on a clip board if the room was vacant and ready to clean. One morning, we headed out for day and saw the supervisor going down the hall toward our room. As we reached the elevator, I realized that I had forgotten my hat and went back to the room to get it. The tip was gone and there was nobody working on the room. From then on, we searched for our housekeeper, usually found cleaning a nearby room, and personally gave her the tip. We told her we had been leaving tips for her and asked if she had received them. She had not and was shocked. We reported the problem to the front desk and they were shocked and said that something would be done.
I like the suggestion above of leaving the cash out of site under a pillow. But always write “For our housekeeper—thank you!” on a piece of paper so that they know it is for them and not money you were hiding..
@ Mantis
Complaining about others tipping as being “basically just virtue signaling for terrible people to try to feel good about themselves” is how selfish people justify to themselves that their own lack of generosity is their own core virtue.
I agree that tipping is getting out of control and I use discretion. But how I—or anyone else—chooses to spend $5 of their own d@am money is none of your d@mn business and not subject to your judgment of virtue.
Your judgment is overruled.
We saw a manager doing this at Kimpton Seafire. We suspected it so we staged the tip, walked down the hallway away from the room and watched the manager go in. When she came out, we pretended we had forgotten something and returned to the room where we confirmed the money was gone.