The auto-gratuities don’t always make their way to the servers. Sometimes some gets skimmed by management, other times there is a set percentage of tipping out to various Front of House (hostess, bussers, coat check, etc) and Back of House (dishwashers, etc), so that 15 % autogratuity could mean the server is seeing very little of the tip , for the table they served. Some restaurants allow customers to top up the autogratuity.
It also is income that needs to be declared on Income Tax in Canada, whereas the Govt turns a blind eye of sorts with respect to cash tips.
The autogratuity in Canada for groups of 6 or more is usually 18 percent lately.
I don’t have a problem with auto-gratuity because there is often someone who isn’t paying enough of their share at the table when there’s a group dinner. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid more because someone in my group doesn’t allow for the taxes or shared appetizer (separate cheques aren’t always possible) to make sure the server gets at least a 15% tip, when there hasn’t been auto-gratuity.
When I was at University I and my friends worked in all manner of tipped positions. None of them made less than twice the minimum wage. None of them. Hotel housekeepers in marginal hotels were tipped the worst but they also got a bit more per hour than the people that were tipped better.
The Law of Supply and Demand works for labor, too. If the supply of potential laborers drops because the pay is too low, then the pay creeps up to an almost fair level.
Bellmen, doormen, hotel maids, waiters, bussers, valets, etc. all make a decent amount when wages and tips are included or they leave. Maybe if unemployment stayed about 15% for a while that would change, but that is so rare in the US that it has not been a factor there. Maybe prolonged high unemployment rates are more common in the relatively recent past in other cultures, hence the disdain for tipped positions?
I don’t know. All I do know is that tipped employees in the US tend to be decent or better at their jobs. Non-tipped employees in the same positions (albeit in 3 and 4 star cafes/hotels, I do not frequent 5 star cafes/hotels so I can not speak to their skills) in other countries tend to be a bit more oblivious at times. Still friendly and fun, just not as good at their jobs. I am in Greece now and the waiters are good fun and many are knowledgeable but getting their attention can be a challenge. I have gotten up and walked in to the cafe looking for waiters a time or two this month. And they did not seem to mind, they were just “Check now?” LOL!
small h, I would not think that multi-six figure incomes are at all frequent, but there are positions as Bellmen and Doormen in California where they work 4 days a week, 6 to 7 hour shifts, and they were making close to $100,000 a year. The thing with tipped work is that it is like Fight Club in some ways. You just do not talk about how much you make. But when you look at our apartments and our cars, it was pretty obvious we were making pretty good money. Not California money, but pretty good. I worked at the Hyatt Grand Champions in Indian Wells and it was not nearly as good as the hotels/resorts on the water. I turned down a job at the Intercontinental in San Diego and regret it to this day. They were rolling.
I also worked at the Grand Hyatt DC and it was good but not great. But it put me through my years at George Mason and bought me a nice car and a 10 year old 8M sailboat so I was doing ok. Our ladies (the housekeepers) were the ones we worried about because their tips varied widely. Different groups tipped in very different ways.
My female friend was a concierge at the Waldorf Astoria in the late 90s, and it was very frustrating to her that both she and her male colleagues would take care of guests , getting the guest reservations or tickets, and the guests, usually male (often a husband, boyfriend or father ), would hand a tip to the male concierge, right in front of my friend, or when my friend wasn’t there, even when my friend had done the work. Back then, the tips weren’t pooled, and were very rarely shared , even when it had been a team effort. It made a situation where my friend resented some of her male colleagues. I think sometimes, it was a misconception by the guest that the whole concierge team benefited from a single tip.
She worked there for almost 2 years, then returned to Montreal and went into Marketing, which had suited her better.
I recently spent 10 days traveling on the West Coast (US), and every single hotel told me that the room wouldn’t be cleaned every day, only every other day at best, because they didn’t have enough house cleaners. Five different places from Portland to Santa Barbara; I didn’t care, but it was surprising. Maybe people aren’t tipping cleaning staff enough?
I do not know about why housekeeping is now relatively rare but I am seeing it in South America, SE Asia and Europe, too.
If I had to guess, it would be that Rooms Division managers think they can get away with reducing their payroll and are taking advantage of the situation. The competition between Rooms and F&B is fierce and I can see this being a case of management taking advantage of the ambivalence many guests have to having people “in their space”. I have been out of the industry for 25+ years but I hope that the ladies are doing well. They were a tough bunch.
Phoenikia, Concierge staff is a tough one and it sounds like your friend worked with snakes. There are plenty of those, but I was lucky that my teams had very few. The concierge staffs had more than their share. My favorite concierge at the Grand Hyatt became a Realtor and we worked in the same area for years.
In 2019, I stayed at a Westin in Kauai. The Westin didn’t mention the resort fee anywhere on the site, and I booked their hotel for around $400/night for 4 nights, thinking it would a nicer experience at roughly the same price as some 3 star hotels I had been looking at that all seemed to have resort fees. It turns out the Westin did have a daily resort fee, I guess all hotels and resorts on Kauai do. The condos looked cheaper at first glance, but they have a cleaning fee that’s around $200 bucks even if you only stay 4 nights. I did the math for condos, hotels and motels. After doing a few dozen calculations for different accommodations, it looked like 4 nights in Kauai was going to cost around $1800 whether I stayed at a $200 3 star motel with a resort fee, a B&B, a condo with a resort fee and cleaning fee or the Westin (which also had a resort fee I’d find out about later) where I stayed. Next time, I’ll stay at the 3 star motel or hotel.
Because of corporations wanting to look environmental, they offered me a $7 breakfast sandwich at their breakfast counter with no seating, as an alternative to having my room cleaned each day. I told them, if I’m paying $400 a night plus a resort fee , I want my room cleaned every day.
Was I going to tip housekeeping on top of that? I think I probably did.
It bothers me that Westin would hide behind an environmental excuse to cut back on hours given to housekeeping staff, as far as I could tell.
While I’ve never had the opportunity to stay at a $400/night room in my life so far, the trend to not supply new towels / bed sheets every day or clean only after the guest leaves (assuming it’s not more than a couple of days) has been a trend in Germany for at least a decade if not longer. But they pride themselves for being extra-special environmentally aware (as my sis loves to remind me), so that might be an outlier compared to other countries. Although I’ve seen it in Spain and Italy, too.
Not cleaning hotel rooms every day in hotels seems common now, but in my experience has not explictly been called a staffing issue. There are usually references to limiting unnecessary exposure and reserving resources. In my experience there is a longer history of not changing towels and bedsheets every day to conserve resources.
I certainly don’t change my towels and sheets everyday at home, so it usually makes sense to me, and when it didn’t, there were instructions for exceptions.
Right now I am in an Airbnb apartment and am happy not to think about clearing out each day, hoping my room will be cleaned at a time convenient me. That’s probably off the original topic, which I have forgotten.
That $400 room at the Westin in Kauai was roughly equivalent to a $165 dollar room in Pittsburgh or Cleveland. It was also worn- down.
Beautiful landscape but a captive market.
The save laundry detergent / no fresh towels every day has been common in Canada and the UK over the past decade, too.
I don’t need fresh towels every day. I’m happy if the linens are changed every 3 days. I do want the trash taken out every day.
I totally agree, which is why I didn’t mind. But each place made a point of mentioning staffing problems.
Drives me crazy when I stay in a place that has the little sign about hanging your towel if you don’t want it washed and then they wash it anyway. What’s the point?
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
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Fisticuffs are warranted in such situations.
Just sayin’.
More realistically, there’s a group of 8 or so of us who are alumini of a certain corporation who meet up for a few beers and wings or what not once a month or so. One guy was kind of like what you mention.
Lucky it doesn’t happen to often, but sometime I honestly do not know what to do. I know some people (due to their upbringing or personal experience… whatever reason) give very little tip. I am talking about 10% or less.
On one hand, giving tip is a personal option and freedom. On the other hand, I feel very embarrassed to be sitting at the same table.
I am not a tv person, really!
But there was an episode of Friends where Ross went to dinner with his GF (Anniston?) and her Type A Dad at a very expensive restaurant.
And the Dad stiffed the waiter.
So Ross tried to hide a tip for the waiter but the Dad found out and tried to make Ross pay for the entire meal if he wanted to be the good guy.
Sounds contrived but it was an interesting contrast in viewpoints. I can not remember if Ross paid or not.
It didn’t state, but I am pretty sure he did (just looked up on Youtube)
I think this is an even more philosophical question. If someone already paying for the whole meal, do you (as a guest) get to change the amount of tip he/she is paying.
I do. Someone who is elderly, and very generous to me often paid, for the group dinner or for my dinner. The dinner was often around $200 after tax. I knew my elderly friend was tipping 10 percent, so I would slip the server an extra $20 before I left the restaurant.
I’ve also dropped off more tip later, when I’ve found out a tip was too light.
I agree with Phoenikia. If I believe the tip is going to be light and I am one of the guests, not the host, I will still try to add a tip to the server. If I know the host, I will ask “Mind if I drop a little extra for the waiter/ress?” The ones I know kind of laugh and do not care. If the host is someone I do not know, or someone who I think might take it ill, I will act like I am going to the mens room and find the waiter/ress to tip proactively.
Paying for the meal on the sly after everything has been ordered and you are just finishing up your drinks and desert is also a good way to pay for dinner when you know there is going to be more than one person trying to pay for the whole tab. It only works once, though. The second time you have to call the host and give them your credit card and the tip percentage before everyone is seated. LOL!
I have found that hosts, maitre d’s and cafe owners are usually pretty supportive of this, especially when you name the tip percentage for their staff in advance. They want their people to be taken care of and they like it when their guests are competing to pay the bill.
I did that once with my ex-father in law. He is notoriously cheap. We were visting him out of state and I never would have seen the waitstaff again in my life, but I just felt embarrassed and tossed some extra money on the way out. He had no shame about his miserly ways though so would not have cared if he saw me do it.
