Why not just charge the tips fee as part of the cruise price?
Excellent point jlawall - I agree entirely. Other cruise lines (I've heard others mention NCL) do this. On the other hand, should tips be included in the cruise price, it gives you less control should you decide a lower tip (or no tip) is justified in a particular situation.
I personally take offense when the servers take time out of your meals to inform you of the "excellent service" they have provided and are very clearly implying that they deserve a tip commensurate with "excellent" service. Tipping should be a hands-off exercise. I feel that
DCL makes too much out of it as do the servers (at least the ones we've had this past cruise). You are paying a premium price for a DCL cruise and you expect to get a premium level of service for that price. If you get less than a premium level of service or even an average level of service, why would anyone expect to get a premium tip? If anything, in our case, it went a long way to turning us off as opposed to making us jump to throw money at them. However, seeing how the servers turned us off on tipping, it made us realize just how great out cabin steward was - made up our room 2 and 3 times a day, was very friendly, didn't even mention a tip. He got the premium tip.
Please keep in mind that they work a minimum of 50 hours a week.
When a person takes a job, they know exactly how much they will be paid, and exactly what the job entails. In the US, and I'm sure with DCL, work is by "free will". If you don't like the work, you don't take the job or you can quit. With DCL, they sign 6 month contracts. They are free not to renew their contracts if they don't like the work. If you are working on a cruise ship, I don't think that anyone has illusions that they are simply going to work 40 hours a week, and be entitled to free room, board, and lounging on the ship the other 128 hours a week - do you? I agree entirely with jgalecpa. Everyone seems to be making such a big deal out of the hourly rate the cruise staff is making, wonders why most are foreign, and entirely neglect that they cannot earn even those "small" wages in their home country. If they were to work in their home country, they would earn even less than what DCL gives them, and probably even longer hours. They'd be working 6 or 7 days a week in their home countries and longer than an 8 hour day - surely room and board would not be included - would it?
If you are opposed to/offended by the tipping culture, get a grassroots movement going to change it, but please don't take it out on people who depend on tips
Yes, I am opposed/offended - and, quite frankly, there is no need to get a grassroots movement going to get it changed - the customer has total control. On the contrary, those people who depend on tips are the ones who need to get the grassroots movement going, unionize, or just refuse jobs where they depend on tips. The issue is, in that the world we live in, there will always be someone who is willing to take a job regardless of the wages. We see this as a significant number of technology jobs in the US are simply being transplanted to countries like India where they will do the same work for $5 and $10 per hour or foreigners being brought in to the US on visas specifically because they are willing to work for low wages. That is what the problem is. Lots of US workers are quick to complain, but don't do much about it. If the US workers are better, then either they can find work paying the wages they think they deserve, or, they take less wages - being shown that they can be replaced with others capable of doing the same job for less. Unemployment in the US is at 20 year highs, shows no signs of going down, and people are asking why?
In this case, it is not up to the customer to determine the wages of an employee - that is between the employee and the employer. As the customer, I am not the employer. So, those who depend on tips, should not take it personally if they don't get the tip they "expect" or expect customers give them any tip at all.
Further, considering the state of our economy, where people have lost jobs, we see deflation all around us, why would people who "depend on tips" think they are entitled to a 15% or 20% tip because that is what "our culture" has trained them to think? With wages in every job sector going down, why shouldn't the expected tip our culture expects be rolled back to 10%? People are making less money, taxes and insurance are going up - if I have less expendable money in my budget and am having to get by on less, then why shouldn't those who "depend on tips" have to deal with it as well? Let them work harder and longer hours as everyone else does to make ends meet. Don't take it out on customers who are simply looking to get their money's worth
FOR WHAT THEY HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR.
