Welcome to Fawlty Britain

It’s half-term and I am staying at a hotel a couple of hours outside London. It’s a delightful place, set amid acres of rolling countryside, with delightful rambles on the doorstep and villages stuffed full of fudge shops and artisanal crafts. 

On this morning, however, I am waiting for a coffee and observing the breakfast service as it slips into a quiet chaos in which things are going very, very wrong. One lonely chef is batting away orders, each of which is personalised with the sort of fussy request — no dairy, vegan, could-you-add-some-green-stuff, can-I-substitute-this-with-the-mushroom — that the modern breakfast diner is wont to make. Waiters, of whom there are not many, look overwhelmed and slightly shell-shocked: tables groan with dirty dishes that no one has had time to clear. Diners cluck and check their watches in a murmur of dissent. I notice someone from reception has been drafted in to serve the toast. 

After breakfast, delayed because my first order was abandoned before it made it to the kitchen, I ask one of the waiting staff whether things are usually so . . . stretched? “We’re just unbelievably short-staffed,” he tells me of the situation. Most new staff, in the kitchen or on the restaurant floor, are staying an average of six weeks.

There are two types of people to have emerged from the pandemic. Kind people, and those who have become even more entitled

It’s no fault of the hotel in question, which is far too lovely to be named, that it has fallen victim to a crisis that is being felt across the world. Stories about the chronic staff shortage in hospitality are being echoed everywhere from San Francisco to St Ives. The further from a major city, the more deeply the shortages are felt. But even central London restaurants are struggling to deliver service because they can’t produce the food. Skye Gyngell, of Spring, at Somerset House, who also manages the restaurants at the five-star Hampshire hotel Heckfield Place, tells me that they can only offer service at Spring from Wednesday through to Saturday, and she has redesigned the menu to manage the constant stress of people not turning up for work. 

The situation in Hampshire is even harder still. Many staff returned to eastern Europe during the first lockdown, and then, with Brexit, felt less inclined to fill in the papers that would allow them to return. Others have quit the industry on realising they no longer fancied working the standard 50-hour week: “a lot of my former staff are now packing shelves at Waitrose, or driving Amazon delivery vans,” she says. Meanwhile, the kitchen works on a knife-edge tension whereby Gyngell can never be sure who will work the shift. Young trainees don’t bother appearing for trials: staff, quite sensibly, but frustratingly, don’t come in when they are feeling ill. 

It’s the same story in hotels, where so chronic is the shortage of chambermaids or back-of-house staff that it is now not uncommon to see the general manager doing the nightly turndown service, or taking the laundry home with them each night. 

Just call it Fawlty Britain, where our attempts at sophisticated hospitality have been reduced to the comedy flailings described by John Cleese and Connie Booth in the Seventies sitcom about an out-of-town hotel. The situation may be global but in Britain it is especially acute. Blame Brexit, blame the pandemic, but things ain’t what they were. Gyngell argues that the UK’s circumstances might be bleaker because, as a culture, the Brits have never valued the catering industry as a career choice, or seen it as a real job. 

“Most waiters in the UK are only ‘filling-in’ while they wait for other things,” says the chef, who is Australian by birth. “The restaurant industry is so new and unevolved in Britain, which until about 15 years ago only really had a PizzaExpress and your local Italian as dining options, that kitchen jobs in Britain have traditionally been filled by people from countries that see it as a job for life.” 

Neither do people within the industry hold truck with the suggestion that the shortage is down to the poor wages. Yes, entry-level jobs pay only a minimum, but a London recruitment manager tells me that a head chef in a decent kitchen these days can earn £90k within a few years. The career path is a good one, especially now. Adds Gyngell, only slightly jokingly: “Walk into a restaurant or a hotel as an entry-level waiter at the moment, and, let me tell you, you’ll be a general manager within five months.”

Meanwhile, we as customers who have spent a decade ordering things Exactly As We Want, are going to have to dial down our expectations as we navigate the road ahead. We may pride ourselves on the sophisticated dining cultures, and how our palates have evolved. But unlike other institutionalised dining nations, such as France or Italy, many countries are still pathetically snobby about those in “catering” jobs. No surprise, then, to find our waiters vanished. Few are going to stick around after a shift where customers have been overly demanding, or screamed at them for “ruining” a meal. 

“There are two types of people to have emerged from the pandemic,” says Gyngell. “Kind people, and those who have become even more entitled.” It’s a truism that speaks to a far greater population than those of us who eat in restaurants, and it’s a nasty behaviour that I myself have had to check. Yes, the world’s all gone a bit Basil Fawlty: but it’s a great deal more entertaining than dining alone with a Deliveroo. 

Email Jo at [email protected]

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