PebHmong Discussion Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: theking on October 23, 2023, 12:39:30 AM
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for the staff because some rich spoiled guests are so entitled:
A worker who’s been cleaning a 5-star hotel for 14 years says guests are so angry about how dirty their rooms have gotten they throw things and shout at her
For Xochitl Mendez, a housekeeper who has worked at an MGM hotel in Las Vegas for the past 14 years, cleanliness (or lack thereof) is a safety issue.
“The rooms aren’t cleaned every day, and every day we see guests who are super, super annoyed. They’re angry and they insult us,” Mendez, 55, told Fortune. “Sometimes we don’t want to go into the rooms because the guests are so mad.”
Once, Mendez said, an angry guest yelled at her and threw magazines when she entered the room, shouting, “Why hasn’t this room been cleaned when I’m paying so much money?”
She said she and her colleagues report angry guests immediately, but security either shows up—or doesn’t. For her work, cleaning rooms on the swing shift—between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m.—Mendez makes $21 an hour, and rarely gets tips. The pay hasn’t kept up with the growing costs of food, utilities, and gas, she said.
Alone in the building
The debate over hotel-room cleaning has gotten so intense, one of Nevada’s most powerful unions might strike over it. Last month, members of the Culinary Union, which represents Mendez and 60,000 other mostly Las-Vegas-based housekeepers, laundry attendants, bartenders, and servers, voted overwhelmingly to authorize a work stoppage. Union members have also held pickets in front of MGM and Caesars properties. Housekeepers are asking for panic buttons, minimum staffing levels, and higher pay—and to make required daily housekeeping mandatory in Vegas hotels, according to the union.
Mendez told Fortune that she’s seen people carry guns into the resort, which makes her more fearful of confronting angry guests. Earlier this year, union officials testified to the Nevada legislature that members have been attacked while alone on floors, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But that wasn’t enough to stop passage of a law that repealed a requirement, passed early in the pandemic, to clean rooms daily. The hotel industry and the Henderson Chamber of Commerce opposed the measure, saying it stifled the economic recovery and that many guests didn’t want it.