Between the workers and their superiors disputes arise over the distribution of tips. Dissatisfaction and lack of cooperation result which obstruct the smooth functioning of departments. Chambermaids designate desk clerks as “sneaking devils,” because they think the desk clerk takes their tips. They hate the bell-boys because they think they get more than their share of tips. Waitresses, especially banquet waitresses, have a constant grudge against head waiters. They think they hold back a large share of tips from them. Maids resent it when housekeepers give them transient corridors where tips are poor, and waitresses accuse head waiters of putting them on poor stations.
Tips are a disadvantage to the worker because she can never know what her weekly earnings are to be and plan her expenses accordingly. But she defends tipping because she feels that this is the only part of her earnings over which she has control. She knows her wage rate will be low, but she may get big tips through her own efforts. The uncertainty of the amount of tips has a romantic fascination for the maid or waitress. She thinks that by an ingratiating manner to the guest, by staying overtime to be on the spot when a guest leaves, by her persistence, and by chance of securing a good floor or station she will get tipped. Moreover, she has heard many stories of good tips. Maids and waitresses boast of the good tips they receive and remain silent when they get none. Each maid hopes that she will be the lucky one. But she comes to realize reluctantly that she cannot control tips. She may not get a good floor if she is a chambermaid but one on which transients stop for one night and are never seen. In modern hotels the “regulars” stop on the higher floors. She may not obtain favor with the housekeeper or the desk clerk or the head waiter. She may be at lunch or supper when a guest leaves. She may be growing old and the guest will not be pleased by her manner. The lot of the older chambermaid who is in many respects more efficient than the younger one, is especially hard. She does not get tips and she ceases to expect them. This discrimination against the experienced worker illustrates the unfairness of tips as a part of the workers’ wage. Tips depend not so much on service as on a pleasing appearance and manner. Advice to a new maid is to “fix yourself up” and “don’t be bashful. The ones who get tips are those who stick around and sass ’em back and make them notice you.” There is a question as to how many of the tips received are legitimate tips. The danger to a young girl, who ingratiates herself with the guests to get tips, is only too evident. The girls often said to those who got no tips, “Oh, you’re too straight to make good tips. Make up to them.”
The dissatisfaction of the maid who gets low tips grows and finally she leaves her job. An employment manager of a large group of hotels in New York City said, “From my experience as employment manager, I am thoroughly convinced that the tipping system is more directly responsible for labor turnover in hotels than any other one thing. An employee will leave one hotel to go to another where exactly the same wages are paid if she thinks the chance for tips is better.”
The relation of tipping to wages
Tipping, as a factor in the workers’ earnings, has been generally overestimated. A study, made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics during the war period when tipping was comparatively high, shows that the average tip for a chambermaid in Buffalo was 40¢ a day and the highest was only 71¢. In New York City the average tip received by the chambermaids was 49¢ and the highest tip 83¢.[[10]] The Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia in 1919 says of tipping: “Of the 48 maids from whom data on this point were obtained, 8 stated that they received no tips, 7 stated the amount to be very little and the average for those giving actual figures was $1.22 per week. It seems evident that the tips received by maids were not sufficient to make any appreciable addition to their wages.”[[11]]
[10]. Monthly Labor Review, September 1919. Wages and Hours of Hotel and Restaurant Employees. P. 193.
[11]. Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. Wages of Women in Hotels and Restaurants. 1919. P. 5.
Certainly in New York State, according to the data gathered from this investigation, tipping for chambermaids is negligible. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate from maids as to their average weekly tips. They remember a $5 tip they once got but not how much they get each week. In one of the largest New York hotels, one maid says she gets $5 once in a while, then nothing for weeks at a time. One had had $3 in the three months she had worked in the hotel. Another made 50 cents in 5 days. The investigators, while working in hotels, received less than $1 a week in New York City hotels and in the other hotels of New York State only an occasional small tip of from 15 to 25 cents. It may have been due in part to the fact that as new maids they worked on corridors for transients and not for permanent guests. Their experience, however, was borne out by statements of other maids. There was constant complaint that tips were low. In up-state cities maids said, “You never expect tips from travelling men any more. Only when a play actress or somebody like that comes from New York you get a tip.” In New York City also there was complaint that “houses are no good for tips now” and “no rich people come any more.”
Waitresses, the few whom it was possible to interview, received much larger tips than maids. It is more customary to tip waitresses and they are always on the spot to receive their tips. Waitresses interviewed received from $3 to $5 a day in tips. They form, however, a minority of women hotel workers and their position in the industry is precarious, due to the antagonism of the men waiters.