holiday tipping

You may have come across this already. Let's see how this advice holds up versus what actual owners on this site feel is appropriate.

https://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2013/11/brickundergrounds_2013_holiday_tipping_guide

I have historically tipped 50-75% of a condo's common charges, evenly across all the staff more or less. My logic is to take what I think each staff member should get in total from everyone and scale it by my condo's fraction of common charges. For me, "should get in total from everyone" is $10K+, something that amounts to a meaningful bonus in comparison to their annual compensation.

I'm on Nada's side in terms of scaling tips to monthlies. We take a range of 0.5-1 month's co-op maintenance and make that amount our tipping pool and then divide it up among the building staff. (Since we're not in finance, that number doesn't hit $10K+, but hey, everybody's got their troubles.)

Versus the Brick Underground guidance, we go a bit heavy on our porters, but that's because we're WFH a lot and so we have a front-row seat to how hard those guys grind--in an Amazon-driven world, just getting rid of the trash my family generates is a major operation.

Same here with the porters. Overall the Brick Underground is accurate.

I hadn't thought about specifically scaling it to monthly maintenance, but, looking at what I've historically done, the total ends up being about 80% of my monthly maintenance. (full service building, with quite good staff). Those who were principally WFH for the last year or use delivery services should definitely think about how much your building staff did for you.

>> that number doesn't hit $10K+

I didn’t mean that (per my calc) you should be doing $10K personally. Rather, if everyone in your building tipped the way you did, the amount received by each staff member should be $10K+. At 0.5-1.0 months of coop maintenance, I think it would (in aggregate) amount to that much tip per staff person in your building.

$10k target per staff member if every one tips that amount seems pretty good guideline. Some people may not tip as much - some people just moving into the building, people never there etc. So realistically, it is probably $7k per staff member likely tax free. So per household tip to an individual in a bigger building will be smaller but they have more people to tip.

I agree with paying porters much more than the BU poll suggests. I generally do $100 each. They work really hard and have to do the worst jobs in my opinion. Gifts come to just over 80% of my monthly maintenance.

Ah, nada, I get it now, sorry to be dense.

I know nada's a nice guy, not sure if he's 10K to the super nice though ; )

I rent and have tipped 1 week rent (split to entire staff). I am told that most renters do not tip at all, and of those that do I am in the top 50%. This looks to be over 1.0x one month's common charges for my unit (or about 0.75x one month's common charges including taxes).

When I rented I did a lot of tip as you go.