Ladies and gentlemen waltzing around a splendid ballroom aboard an ocean liner -- this is not a fantasy. A family reunion in a French restaurant, with a special waiter asking if we would like some freshly ground pepper on our fish -- this is not a dream. It is the job of the hospitality industry to make perfect meals and perfect accommodations a reality. We all understand the appeal of the hospitality industry, and many high paying jobs are available in hotels, restaurants, clubs, bars, cruise ships, cafés, and so forth, catering to a customer's every whim. Not much education is required. But learning English is important. Why?
Out of curiosity, years ago I went aboard an ocean liner shortly before departure. Pushing through an unmarked door, I descended to a level for staff only. On this level, the concrete corridors were painted battleship gray, just like in the military. The opulence upstairs contrasted sharply with the cement downstairs. People do not generally know that the business end of the hospitality industry is a quasi-military operation. Miscommunication among staff members and misunderstandings between customers and staff, therefore, are not acceptable. For good communication, staff members are often expected to have a good working knowledge of English, a language understood by people all over the world.
Butlers Trays
I have seen the same thing in fine restaurants. Upstairs the diners enjoy subdued lighting and soft music. Downstairs the manager and assistant manager conduct business in a no-nonsense way under bare light bulbs. The quantity of food purchased each month by a successful restaurant could feed a small army, and much of the work downstairs has to do with purchasing and supply.
To learn the ropes, new employees need to know enough English to ask questions of experienced employees who have been with the establishment for many years. That is how newcomers learn about procedures and how to handle customers. A receptionist at the front desk of a hotel or a spa must speak English well enough to take customers' names, addresses, and credit card information. Reception work is a responsible position that requires a high level of fluency in English.
Most customers speak English, so waiters and order takers must speak English, too. If the waiter wrote on his pad that the customer ordered a 'super salad,' not the 'soup and salad,' his mistake would waste food, irritate the cooks, and anger the customer. Waitresses may be attractive, but if they cannot understand what the customer wants, ask questions, and reply fluently, they will not last long in the hospitality business.
For hospitality employees working in kitchens or other behind-the-scenes areas, English may be the only language all co-workers have in common. For example, a young Korean man was once my student. He was living in New York City to study English. He had a part-time job in a Korean restaurant. Since he was intelligent, he was put in charge of instructing a new man, who was from a Spanish-speaking country, but my Korean student did not speak Spanish. The new man, however, understood a little English. My student made an unusual request of me. He asked me to teach him enough English to show the new employee how to use the dishwashing equipment in the Korean restaurant. How could my student have done this job if he had not been studying English at the time?
Customers can be hard to please. For example, the menu of a vegetarian restaurant listed only one salad dressing: carrot ginger. The customer, however, asked the waitress if there was another salad dressing available. 'Yes,' the waitress answered pleasantly, 'we also have tahini dressing.' Do you remember how James Bond, otherwise known as 007 in the movies, preferred his martinis shaken but not stirred? It certainly requires patience and a good working knowledge of English for hospitality workers to deal with customers' special requests.
I worked one summer as a waitress myself, when I was still a college student. I served lunch in the executive dining room of a large corporation. Executives would come in and sit around large circular tables, each of which sat ten. One afternoon I was serving ten hot tomato soups in small bowls. The tray felt very heavy. I was trying to keep the tray steady by pressing it with my left arm against my body, but I needed to shift it slightly each time I leaned forward to lower a small bowl into its proper position, squarely in front of each customer. As I proceeded around the table in this fashion, the whole tray started to tilt towards the customers, so I leaned backward quickly to rebalance.
Well, I do not know how it happened, but one of those little bowls filled to the brim with hot soup flew right off the edge of the tray. The bowl overturned in the air and the red soup spilled into a customer's lap, all over his brown business suit. I could not believe my eyes! My heart stopped beating.
'I am so very sorry,' I said to the gentleman with tomato soup all over his pants. 'I am so sorry,' I murmured to the hostess of the executive dining room, my supervisor, who had leapt up from her chair across the room to attend to the customer. The businessman, who remained seated and did not look up at me, said quietly, 'These things will happen.'
The hostess offered the customer free dry cleaning for his soiled suit, which he accepted. She said to me: 'It will be alright.' She directed me to sit off to one side and rest for a while. The customer in this case was very gentlemanly and did not take offense at this lunchtime catastrophe. I cannot say that my knowledge of English saved my job, but what would have happened if I had not known how to apologize properly?
There are plenty of jobs available for hospitality workers. For example, an article in the New York Times on October 17, 2008, described the sailing of an ocean liner out of New York harbor the day before. The cruise ship had been full, with 1,800 passengers paying fares ranging from ,992 to ,445 for the transatlantic crossing. The crew of 1,016 included 107 cooks, four fitness instructors, a disc jockey, and ten 'gentlemen hosts' to escort unaccompanied women to shipboard events. At the website of the Cunard Line, which owns many of these stately ocean-going vessels, you can see job openings for officers of hotel management, butlers, bar waiters and waitresses, housekeeping and bedroom staff, chefs, junior waitresses, and wine stewards. Every day restaurants and hotels all around the world post job openings in the same categories.
Many of these positions require very little formal education and offer high pay. Such jobs have enabled many people to immigrate or earn enough money to go to school. Because of the quasi-military nature of the hospitality business, good communication skills are a must and good English is often a requirement.
Copyright © 2008 Barbara A. English