Diary of a hotelier

Everything changes with time… doesn’t it?

The times are a’changing and sure enough the hotel industry is setting trends and patterns across the world like never before.

The world has evolved and ‘change’ is the mantra of today’s hoteliers.

From a period in time where facsimiles and trunk dials ruled the business, when hotels, inns and restaurants clustered around railway stations, from an era where there were fixed rules about service and table etiquette — from all that we have progressed to a fast-paced constantly-changing world where yesterday is old news tomorrow is already passé.
 
Nowadays, everyone likes to think — and more importantly proclaim — they are ahead of the curve. It’s as if the world of hospitality has gone a 360-degree change.

Or has it?

My first experience in a true hotel dates back to about sixteen years ago when, as a summer intern from a hotel school, I first entered a professional kitchen as a trainee commis chef.

As luck — or lack of luck — would have it, I was assigned to a banqueting kitchen for the first two months.

So while all my friends bagged the lesser evils of kitchen duties, like working in the butchery or bakery sections, where a standard day shift was the nor, me and one equally ‘lucky’ friend of mine were on banqueting operations, where starting at 0900 hours was the norm and even thinking of clocking off before 2300 hours was a crime.

Of course there was a scheduled three hour break in the afternoons — but not for trainees; they were just kids fooling around in the kitchens and hence needed to work through the afternoons as well.

Coming back to my first day, my friend and I entered the kitchen at 9am sharp in new white and grey uniforms, proud to be getting our first taste of the real hotel world.

We were met with a look of disgust from the senior chefs, and told to wait in the corner by the pot-wash for the head chef to arrive.

The chef soon arrived, gave a smile and a knowing nod and said: “Wait here and observe! What goes on in a real kitchen; I want you to make mental notes and tell me this evening everything you have seen.
 
“Do not even think about moving from here till I tell you to.”

And on that note, he left us.

Time ticked by slowly. The morning changed to noon, then early afternoon, and hunger pangs and stiff legs made us long to move.

My friend made the mistake of leaning back against the wall behind us, only to be sharply told by another chef: “This is a professional kitchen — stand straight!”

It felt like I was back at school being punished for not doing my homework.

By mid-afternoon, the lack of food and no water was making us feel weak.

But this was our first day and our first test: we knew we had to stick it out and make mental notes so we could answer the head chef’s questions about what we’d observed.

So we stood, intently watching the chaffing dishes with colorful foods leaving the kitchens, taking in all the sounds from the surroundings — all the while desperately hoping for that call from the chef asking us to take a break for lunch.

It became unbearable as we watched the entire kitchen team returning from their afternoon breaks, but we kept on observing.

At around 8 pm, the head chef walked by and noticed us standing there.

To our surprise, he exclaimed: “What are you guys standing there in the corner for? Don’t you have any work you should be doing?”

After a long pause, during which we mustered up the courage to speak up, we explained we were simply following his earlier orders.

If we’d expected an apology, we were out of luck. The response was simply: “Welcome to the world of kitchen!”

Then he dismissed us for the day and walked off.

The next day was even better: we were given a schedule indicating that for three days every week, starting immediately, we were to take it in turn to clean the walk-in freezers attached to the main kitchen.

In the remaining three days of our working week, we were assigned to important culinary tasks such as the peeling of carrots, halving onions and, when we were lucky, turning potatoes.

At the end of our first three weeks, we graduated from these simple tasks as another two trainees had arrived, so we were upgraded to a series of new tasks — one of us in the soups section and the other managing the chaffing dishes based on the requirement of the day.

Eventually, we were further elevated in our duties to the point where we actually started helping out the chefs in chopping vegetables and even preparing some dishes.

After six months of being an intern and moving through various kitchens, I left the hotel as a transformed individual.

I returned the following year to a similar series of tasks; only to take in stride all that came my way.

So do I resent all the ‘injustice’ meted out to me and other young trainees?

Definitely not.

Today, as a manager in the industry, I feel it was good to have experienced fields which are so very critical to hotel operations.

Without having gone through such an experience, one would not understand the value of these seemingly less-important tasks.

And why I am writing about these today?
Well, just yesterday evening I met a chef ‘wannabe’ who described to me in graphic detail the ‘atrocities’ inflicted upon him in a professional kitchen.

I am not surprised; after all, some things don’t change at all with time!