Tipping the maid...

It would seem that the rooms at the oldest continuously operating hotel in America are a bit smaller than we would like. I have a roommate and while the beds are large, nothing else really is. For example, there's no desk for our computers. Given the company we work for, clearly that's a problem.

We're also here for 5 days, which means we have at least more than a day's worth of stuff.

As soon as we got in, we had to rearrange the room. We took the "snack tray" off the nightstand and put it in the closet. We had to stretch to find plugs, move blankets out of drawers for our stuff, and generally just completely reorganized. We were a bit upset by the lack of space and actually called for a room upgrade...no luck.

The cleaning lady knocked on my door at 11.30am (I should add that my conference attendance strategy is a 1pm-1am approach, focused highly on networking and less on session attendance).

I told her to come back in a few minutes, but I had a twinge of guilt as I left and thought about giving her a tip b/c the room was admittedly quite disheveled.

On the one hand, it's her job and it is what it is. On the other hand, it's not her fault that the hotel doesn't really cater to the needs of the longer stay of the modern day business traveler with a roommate.

I took out some dollars to give to her (I thought she was right outside the door). When I exited, she had entered the room next door and I didn't bother tracking her down.

Question: should I have tipped her for going above and beyond?