Bar or restaurant work ought to be a universal rite of passage

Iwas, for a brief period in the early 1990s, Britain’s least competent hospitality worker. Clumsy, vague and short-sighted, but too vain to wear glasses, I was sacked from our local brasserie for constantly bumping into tables, dropping plates and “forgetting to smile”.

After that I went to work at a sandwich bar: the kind where the customer chooses a filling from a selection behind a glass counter, and the server makes up their sandwich on the spot. It was boring, repetitive work, perfect for daydreaming.

Alas, I had (still have) a tendency to daydream with my mouth hanging open. One day, while applying egg mayo to a slice of granary, I suddenly noticed a thin, transparent line of drool lowering itself down from my bottom lip. For a second it hung tantalisingly in mid air, and then, plop, it landed right in the middle.

The worst thing was – and I can’t explain or justify this even now – I finished making up the sandwich, wrapped it neatly in greaseproof paper and handed it over the counter – only then meeting the eyes of my horrified, and final, customer.

I was no good at hospitality, but hospitality was good for me. It taught me so much that I needed to learn: about my own failings, about what hard work really looks like, about shifts and rotas and weekly wages, about life beyond the bookish, middle-class world in which I had grown up.

The hospitality industry is currently facing its worst ever recruitment crisis. There are 188,000 vacancies for permanent jobs in UK bars, restaurants and hotels, and an even worse seasonal shortfall looming. Brexit may be partly to blame (before the referendum, 75 per cent of waiting staff in London came from the EU); but the bigger problem, replicated across Europe, is that young people no longer want to do these jobs.

You can hardly blame them, I suppose. Cooped up for two years in a pandemic, unable to travel, socialise or even attend university lectures, they now want to spend their holidays having fun. They work much harder at their studies than my generation did, and have less time for extracurricular work.

And the job market is running so hot that when they do need to work, they can take their pick. Almost any job is likely to be better paid, with less punishing hours, than waiting tables or pulling pints.

Many hospitality businesses are putting up wages and introducing more flexible rotas, in an effort to lure in new recruits. The boss of Greene King, the pub chain, wants training in pubs and restaurants to be accorded the same status as a university degree, so that young people realise there are proper careers to be had.

I take his point. But one of the great strengths of the hospitality industry is its blindness to qualifications. It is one of the few remaining professions where anyone from any background, without a degree, contacts or prior experience, can get a foot in the door. This egalitarianism continues right up the chain: the only qualifications that matter are talent and energy.

In fact, a stint in hospitality ought to be a qualification in itself – a vital entry on every CV. Anyone who knows how to handle a drunk at closing time, or has worked double shifts in a basement kitchen, is likely to be robust, hard-working and humorous. Ideal training for any profession.