Once a month or so, we have our house cleaned by a service that charges about $115 for 2.5 hours of work by a team of two women.
A while ago, it occurred to me that maybe I should be tipping the women.
Should I? Do you? How much?
We usually do. (or did, when they were employees of a service, as opposed to self employed)
$10 each sounds about right
I’ve wondered that too. I have tipped a few times but not much. Just sort of rounded up. They have never seemed to expect it. Ugh, now I feel like a jerk.
If they are self-employed, then probably not. However, a Christmas card with a cash gift is pretty typical, I believe. Sort of the equivalent of a once-a-year tip.
I never did. Nor have I tipped our pet sitters, landscapers, tree-removers, septic tank pumpers, well drillers, roofers… Tipping has gotten ridiculously out of control in this country. I’m doing my part to stop it.
I give mine a Christmas present of money and usually a box of chocolates (or some other edible treat if I found something intriguing at our big craft sale in Edmonton in early December). I’m a little erratic in how much I give, but the dollar amount is normally C$10-20 (I pay my current one C$20/hour, to give you some perspective).
I think there was a very similar thread not long ago.
I leave an envelope with a check for the cleaning service and a $5 bill.
I figure the absence of people and dogs has to be worth something. Not likely she (or they; sometimes it’s two, which doesn’t seem to make it go any faster) will ever see my cats.
But frankly I’m getting pretty tired of tipping everybody. I assume the cleaning service pays them something over minimum wage.
I would do the Christmas envelope thing but it’s not always the same person–that is, there is not a “usual” person. So that seems unfair.
When I had a cleaning lady she was self-employed and did pretty well on what I paid her, so I never tipped her although I’d sometimes leave her things - garden vegetables, small gifts from vacations and so on.
Were I to hire a cleaning service AND it was the same crew every time AND they did a great job, I might tip on occasion because the actual cleaners probably aren’t making much more than minimum wage. Barbara Ehrenreich had an illuminating chapter on being a cleaning lady for one of the big franchised cleaning services in her book Nickel and Dimed.
You’re not making a point to anyone but the workers, who are in one of the least-likely positions to enact this kind of sweeping societal change. Your gesture is about as effective as would be taking a quarter from a bank teller because you’re angry at the mortgage industry.
I’m not saying that you should tip your cleaning lady or landscaper. But if you don’t leave the sweeping generalizations out of this conversation, you’re going to start a(nother) tip war thread.
As far as the wage goes, I think it’s fair to say the wage must be pretty low just based on the cheapness of the service. $115 for 5 hours of labor= $23/Hr before any business expenses, company overheard, profit, etc. It’s safe to say “something above minimum wage” would have to be pretty close to minimum. Whether that factors into the tipping, I don’t know. It’s not something I could see myself paying for in general.