After the long trip home (doesn't it always seem twice as long coming home?), once we got everything unloaded and partially unpacked, we decided to sit down and enjoy some much missed Tu Your Door pizza and watch the recordings. I used the camcorder which only recorded half an hour and my camera which recorded 80 minutes. The only thing we figured out, was that watching a box of leftover food with a piece of bbq chicken from Texas Road House on top of it, for 110 minutes was boring as hell! No activity on camera at all. The other two adults were able to listen to all the noises though, and could better understand why I slept like crap the whole time. Each time the air kicked off, the rat race began. They were saying "what was that....omg....that was loud....how did you sleep through that?" as I responded "exactly". I was annoyed. What kind of animal/rodent chews through a bag of chex mix and leaves the shreds of the bag laying around, but won't take a piece of chicken out in the open or chew through the doggie bag with cheeseburgers and french fries? So we got no confirmation. I go back and forth on whether I'm upset that I didn't find out, or happy that I didn't find out. The funny thing about the whole mess though was that I obviously paid for the rental and what not, I would assume which payment covered the cleaning lady expenses...but when we walked in, there was an empty envelope sitting up by the paper towel with writing on the outside of it. It read "Maid's Tip! Thank you". I have always wondered what type of services require a tip. Obviously waitresses...they make crap money and depend on tips, but even so, I'm one of those people who always tip, but the amount I give depends on the quality of service. If she ignored us the whole time, I tip 10%. If she took very good care of us, I have been known to leave a good 25-30%. Other tipping services I think of are valets, baggage carriers, things like that. I never tip the cleaning lady who cleans my hotel room. She gets paid for that. I'm sure this company that goes around and cleans the rentals gets paid as well. But I pondered all week as to what I was going to do with that envelope. (A) I had no intent on having money left over by the end of the week, if I did have money left over, we'd have done something else; (B) She didn't do a very good job of cleaning the place before we got there, otherwise we wouldn't have had the forewarning of something lurking about because the feces would have been cleaned up; (C) We kept the place clean and/or cleaned up after ourselves. The only towels we left were the ones that didn't have time to run through the washer and dryer...a process which took about 6 hours since the dryer failed to dry clothes. So since I was already convinced I would not be leaving a tip, I had a choice to make. I could simply "misplace" the envelope and pretend I hadn't seen it...or I could simply leave it alone hoping that the point was well taken on the other end that we weren't very happy with the cleanliness upon our arrival. I took option (c). I scooped up some of the feces from the kitchen counter ensuring the envelope was covered with them, and laid the envelope back down on the counter. Rude? Probably. In retrospect, it was probably mean. But more could be done to take care of a rodent problem. There are products out there that work, and work really well. They aren't that expensive, I buy them for my house. "JUST ONE BITE" is the best one in my opinion, but Tomcat works well also. So my "tip" would be to invest in something that works so that renters can truly enjoy their stay.
If it is customary to tip the cleaning people for rentals, then perhaps the owner should ensure the guests are happy and comfortable. It really isn't the cleaning company's responsibility to purchase such products, but if I worked for that cleaning company, I'd selectively choose which owners I clean for.
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