Hyatt to pay $1 million to housekeepers laid off in 2009; union ends boycott

This is great news, provided most of the money actually gets to the unjustly fired workers. Congratulations to them and to the union which fought for them. Hopefully, this is also a lesson the the management at Hyatt not to mistreat its employees this way again.

but pretty small change considering how much Hyatt brings in, spread across 100 people.

it won't change how they treat their now out-of-house outsourced employees and it won't give anyone their job back.

if they wanted to "demonstrate care" then they wouldn't have treated their workers - the ones who do some of the dirtiest work every day - the way they did in the first place.

it's simply the tax they're willing to pay to continue to behave exactly how they want, and they wouldn't pay it with such fanfare if they couldn't afford it or didn't want all the positive publicity.

I believe that the average hotel patron doesn't care. They just want their room cleaned by an invisible force and not acknowledge that the invisible force is a human being. Is it Marriott that is now using the tip in the envelope method as both to suggest tips (and avoid paying a decent wage);i.e., patrons don't leave tips? Personally I like the custom of leaving the tip on the pillow.

I believe that our commercial relations have devolved to being pretty much a money cash only basis. In other words avoiding human relationships as part of the business.

In order to get the best price we are willing to sacrifice things like treating others as human beings - whether the others are staff or customers. Too many customers reciprocate with treating retail staff with contempt. Anyone who is yammering on their cell phone when paying for their purchase, especially grocery stores, is guilty of treating the person checking them out with contempt, as though the human being on the other side of the counter is a machine.

Plus it seems the standard accepted by customers of how to be treated has devolved to accepting being treated with veiled contempt by business owners.

If a business owner - or staff treat me poorly I walk out. I can think of a couple of times that I decided to not spend a fair chunk of change at both Best Buy and Bed, Bath and Beyond as examples of lousy big box stores. But I can think of a bike shop I refuse to patronize now, a grocery store I stay away from, etc.

What is sad is that keeping customers happy is so easy. Be honest, on time, treat them with respect (i.e., Mr. Owner, get your head away from the PC and instead talk to your customer).

But considering Walmart is one of the largest, if not the largest, retailer in the world, I figure that most folks would just prefer a store that has no human beings but instead just has robots that get the product and take there money. Who needs to deal with people?

Has retail developed a collective social disorder of avoiding human beings at all costs? Or does it just come down to old fashioned greed - both of the business owner and the customer?