Just when you thought the plutocratic profiteers running America’s exploitative, low-wage economy couldn’t get any more clueless, self-serving, pious, and mingy – along comes Lady Maria of Marriott, magnanimously saying: “Let them eat tips.”
Marriott is the corporate domain of the Royal Marriott Dynasty that supports the political notion that America is divided between a few noble “Makers” (like them) and a mass of “Takers” (like you and me). They own 4,000 hotels with 690,000 rooms in 78 countries, operating under 18 different brand names (ranging from plebeian chains like Fairfield Inn to the luxury Ritz-Carlton resorts), hauling in nearly $13 billion in revenue last year.
Yet, the extravagantly rich Marriott domain is a miserly employer that fattens its profits by paying its hard-working housekeepers poverty-level wages of roughly $8.32 an hour. So, enter Lady Maria Shriver, grandly offering to boost the pay of Marriott’s 22,000 North American housekeepers. A pay raise, perhaps? Oh, tut-tut – the moneyed elites prefer charitable gestures to straightforward populist remedies.
So, Shriver’s foundation has “partnered” with the far-flung hotel empire to reduce its low-wage housekeepers to begging for alms from Marriott customers. The corporate giant has adopted Shriver’s noblesse oblige program (gaily titled “The Envelope Please”) by putting an envelope in each room asking customer to subsidize its employees’ wages with tips. The envelope even scolds customers, saying that, “The hard work [of room attendants] is many times overlooked when it comes to tipping.”
Hello – Marriott is the one deliberately overlooking the hard work of its housekeepers. This is a disgraceful and embarrassing exercise in corporate feudalism. Come on, Marriott – stop playing Lord of the Manor and just pay a decent wage!
“Compensation up for Marriott, Hilton CEOs,” www.bizjournal.com, April 8, 2014.
“Marriott: Company Information,” www.news.marriott.com, September 1, 2014.
“Marriott’s New Envelope For Room Tips Stirs Debate,” www.npr.org, September 16, 2014.
“Hotel Chain Will Leave Envelopes In Rooms To Encourage Guests To Tip Housekeepers,” www.thinkprogress.org, September 15, 2014.

McDonald’s image problem

Now here’s a dinner I wish I could’ve attended. According to Associated Press, it was an elegant evening of fine dining in New York City’s trés chic Tribeca neighborhood. Celebrity chefs prepared a sumptuous spread of international cuisines for this truly unique ballet for the taste buds. The feast was called “a transforming dining experience.”
Actually, it was not so much transforming as it was mind bending. The dinner was hosted by McDonald’s! The fast-food mega-chain of cheap eats was making yet another stab at enhancing its image, this time by trying to convince reporters that its food is actually healthy, fresh, high-quality, and even worthy of gourmet dining. Thus, the scribes were treated to such dressed up dishes as kung pao chicken made with the chain’s Chicken McNuggets; gnocchi made with McDonald’s french fries; and a pumpkin-spiced dessert fashioned from its biscuit mix.
The closest I’ve come to such culinary pretension was years ago when I reluctantly agreed to judge a Spam cooking contest, choking down bites of Spam Fricassee, Coquille St. Spam, and Spam Spumoni. It was the food equivalent of dressing a pig in an evening gown. Some things are simply what they are – and it’s best that we not pretend to fancy them up.
Nonetheless, McDonald’s richly-paid honchos keep trying to elevate their corporate image from fast-food purveyors of sugar and fat to – as the Tribeca gourmet event tried to claim – an epicurean establishment offering “good food served fast.” Their attempts, though, are all smoke and mirrors, rhetoric and stunts. The CEO proclaims nonsense like this: “We’ve got to make sure the food is relevant.”
Get real! Whether trying to gloss over its exploitation of low-wage workers or its health-challenging Big Macs, the McDonald’s image won’t change until the corporation does.
“Can McDonald’s shed its junk-food image?” Austin American Statesman, August 19, 2014.