I'm concerned I may be accidentally extorting/accepting bribes from one of our regular hotel guests. She speaks only Chinese, and I've been the only one who was able to help her in the past because of it (thank [deity of your choice] for Google Translate on my phone), so she always insists on dealing with me. She's gotten to know the routine fairly well: she comes in on Saturday night, the hotel's totally sold out, but we usually have a couple cancellations at 3am. She comes to the desk around 11pm, asks "rooms?" I shake my head, she says "Ok" and points at 3 o'clock on her watch. I nod, and she comes back at 3am. So far, I've always been able to get a hotel room for her at 3am, but there's never a guarantee. Lately, she's been giving me a $25 tip when she first comes to the desk, when there's no guarantee that I'll be able to get her a room. Tonight, I tried giving the money back and explaining "no tip until you get a room." She gave it back to me. When I was (barely) able to get her a room at 3am just now, she gave me another $25 tip. I'm worried she may have thought I was saying $25 wasn't enough earlier.
She has a Chinese passport; is it common practice to have to bribe the night clerk to get a hotel room in China? I finally decided to just make a reservation for her for the next four Saturdays so she doesn't have to wait until 3am anymore. If she continues tipping me so generously, I'll take it as a compliment on my guest service skills rather than a bribe.