Late last year, I wrote about how my roommate and I accidentally overtipped our doormen. Well, this extreme generosity was not a one time occurrence. Today, I overtipped our cleaning lady.
Our apartment had been in pretty bad shape. Embarrassingly dirty, to be quite honest. A half hour into the cleaning job, the cleaning lady’s daughter showed up to help out. Yeah. The lady needed reinforcement. A couple hours later, they wrapped up and she told me the total would be $70. I gave her a folded up wad of cash containing $90. Percentage-wise, it was a pretty big tip (~29%). But for the effort it took the two of them to clean up the microwave explosions, crumb spills, bathroom grime, and general accumulation of dust, I thought that a $20 bump was reasonable.
But apparently, the cleaning lady herself didn’t agree. 10 minutes after she left I heard a knock at the door. When I answered, she asked me to confirm how much I had given her, implying that she herself was shocked to leave and find $90 in her hand. Unable to bring myself to back into a smaller tip, I sent her on her way with the full amount.
I’m afraid of what sort of dangerous precedent we’ve inadvertently set here. Next thing you know, I’ll be handing benjis to the dog walker. And I don’t even have a dog!
