Don’t Blame the Hotel Housekeeper for Dirty Sheets

By Robert McGarvey

By now you have seen the Inside Edition episode – or at least heard about it – where  Candlewood Inn and Suites in Manhattan, La Quinta Inn and Suites near Central Park, and a Residence Inn all failed to change sheets between guest visits.

How did the show know? Simple.  It sprayed “I Slept Here” on the sheets – invisible to the naked eye, visible under ultra violet light.

All three hotels were profusely apologetic – but so what? Not changing sheets between guests is plain disgusting and if it is happening to sheets, it is happening to towels, glasses and who knows what else. And reportedly many hotels do not change comforters or duvets between guests, although some do.  

Note: Inside Edition batted .333. It checked into 9 hotels, 3 failed the sheet test. That is a terrifying stat.

Understand too: Inside Edition checked out of the room. Then later checked back in, under a different name, requesting that room. The sheets should have been changed, of course. They weren’t.

That is indeed gross.

But I urge you: do not blame the housekeepers.

I am quite sure housekeeping is negligent, really at most hotels below 5 diamond status.  But that failing is not on the housekeepers, anymore than the bartender is responsible for the swill the hotel bar pours as its house brands of booze and the slop that features in many hotel breakfast buffets is the fault of the property’s executive chef.

What is at work is a kind of ruthless cost cutting that, at many hotels, went into overdrive in the early days of the Great Recession, that is, 2008-2009 and the mindset still predominates at many properties.  I have talked with senior hotel execs – rungs above GMs – who have gloated about their cost cutting “successes.”

And now the guests are suffering the consequences.

Housekeeping has often been a high priority target of senior hotel managers. I have no idea why, just that it is. Maybe it’s because so few guests ever have direct interactions with housekeepers – who work silently, behind the scenes, with a kind of invisibility.

As management turned the screws, at many properties housekeepers have found the number of rooms they were assigned to clean per day jumping from 12 to 14  upwards to 15+, often approaching 20.

The math becomes impossible when it takes an estimated 30 minutes on average to clean a typical hotel room. Add minutes if the guest has checked out for tasks like sheet changing. Also add minutes if the guest is a slob and many are.

Here’s what union Unite Here said about housekeepers and their ramped up room quotas: “To meet this quota, she often skips breaks and works off the clock. It also is increasingly common for her to have luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, duvets, and extra pillows than in years past. Other add-ons, like coffee pots, spa robes and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, can make a housekeeper’s job of cleaning a room even more difficult and time-consuming.”

Unite Here added:  “With booming business and high room rates, housekeepers face increasing time pressure to maintain a quality guest experience. Many housekeepers report that their hotels are understaffed and that they must work at unsafe speeds, which increases their risk of injury.”

Unite Here also noted that most housekeepers are women, they have the highest injury rate among hotel employees, and here is why: “Each day, she may lift 100-pound mattresses, push heavy supply carts across miles of carpeted floors, climb to clean high surfaces, or drop to her hands and knees to scrub floors.”

For how much money? In most of the country, housekeepers earn near minimum wage especially when they are not unionized.

And often they are forced to deal with disgusting junk left behind by guests, including discarded syringes (increasingly common, apparently).  How would you like to pick needles off the floor? Especially when you are in an enormous time crunch?

What can we – guests – do?

If a room is not cleaned, complain – loudly – to the GM.  

Stress that the fault is not on the housekeeping staff but on the hotel management. Give people too much to do and some of it won’t get done.  

Email the hotel corporate manager – complain loudly, not about housekeeping, but about the corporate mandated cost cutting.

Want to know how you can insure that you get a clean room on check-in? Here are great tips from longtime GM Mike Matthews. Ask for a room that has recently been deep cleaned is his advice.  But read his column.  He also offers poignant insights into the plight of the hotel housekeeper and things are only worse nowadays.

So do this too: Leave the housekeeper a decent tip – at least $2/day, as much as $5 in a ritzy hotel or if you are messy (you know who you are). If the housekeeper does something special for you, tip accordingly.  

Say hello if you see a housekeeper in the hall. Show a little humanity.  
And whatever you do, if your sheets aren’t changed, don’t come down on the housekeeper. It really is not her fault.