One of the major advantages of working in hotels, pubs or restaurants is the possibility of staff accommodation. The quality of this varies massively, I have heard stories of people sharing caravans or storage containers, but I have always been lucky.

Of course, it’s harder to get away from work being always there and then there is the annoyance of fire inspectors, PAT testers and legionella treatments, inevitably on your day off, when nobody has told you they are coming. However, for me, this is dramatically offset by subsidised rents and the lack of life admin I have to undertake. I don’t need to search for electricity tariffs, home insurance policies, Wi-Fi providers or boiler service engineers. If anything breaks, rather than figuring out how to fix it, I just send an email and somebody arrives to fix it (or at least they are supposed to turn up, but that is another story).

However, despite not having to worry about all that administrative irritation, I still find moving house so stressful. A new job means a new house and if the company decides to move your job to another site (often in a different part of the country) that means the suitcases come back out. I did some research one night and discovered tucked a long way back in the HR policy database, a moving house policy, which means if the company move you, they will organise the moving. In my experience it just means the manager loads the cases into the back of their company car and driving me themselves, presumably just to make sure I am off their premises.

Working with the cruise ships I got well used to packing and unpacking, something that I seem to continue having to do. My technique is leaving everything as late as possible, usually not until the night before or sometimes the actual morning of the moving date. As a result, I am a terrible packer. I never have any method of what goes in which case, just throwing things in as I find them. I inevitably don’t have enough boxes so use a variety of shopping bags, one of which will always split and an assortment of my possessions will end up in a puddle.

I am no better at unpacking. It always seems like something that can wait until later. The side effects of this policy is that I buy new stuff as it is easier than rummaging through the piles of luggage and there is at least one case, I have never unpacked and has travelled with me to the last three flats. If I could be bothered, I should really just empty it into a skip as I clearly don’t need anything in it (since I have not unpacked it in over two years) but it seems a lot of effort. That case is my equivalent of a time capsule, frozen in time, waiting to be discovered, full of mystery, being moved round the country then stored in the bottom of wardrobes waiting to be moved again.

Perhaps that could be a new year’s resolution, open that case…. Or perhaps not.

UPDATE

I opened the case!

It contained (amongst other things)… a charger for a phone that I have never had, a golf ball which must have been there since before the pandemic, uniform from a job I left over two years ago and a completely crushed packet of Skips.

That afternoon I had a purge and threw away four bin bags worth of junk. I have only been here a couple of months so it was mainly things I brought with me as I was too lazy to sort them out.

Also in a carpe diem way, I bought myself a flat pack coat stand using a gift voucher I got for Christmas (my life is so exciting!) Amazingly, I opened the package within two days of it arriving and put it together using all the bits in the box, rather than my usual tactic of getting about 70% through and deciding that it will do (the reason all my furniture wobbles).

Is this a sign I am turning into a semi-functioning adult?

Only time will tell.

               In my last blog post I wrote about the physical agony and mental anguish that human resources inflict in the name of corporate training. Well, since then something even worse happened. An office away day.

               At the rural pub we had many work groups staying with us on weekends away, usually to climb mountains (sometimes several mountains). These would have been arranged by bosses who are fit and active, the kind of people who brag about how many parkruns they have done or how invigorating wild swimming is. I hate these people. The trouble with these bosses is that they don’t take into account that for most of their employees, this is a living hell. They don’t own walking shoes and resent having to buy them just for this, they would rather wait for the next bus than run to catch the one about to depart and healthy eating means just one packet of Jaffa cakes.

               These group activities were so often the cause of trouble. Problem one is that because they were staying in a pub, a lot of drinking would happen the night before, often people not used to drinking so the next morning there would be a lot of whispering. The amateur triathlon attending boss would rally their troops out into the rain (it would always be raining) and into the waiting taxis (which their PA will have sorted). By lunchtime the first person would be back with a sprained ankle, pulled hamstring or other miscellaneous injury.

               When the rest of the group did finally trudge back in, inevitably an hour late for dinner as they didn’t know it would take so long, we were informed that they didn’t complete the route and one of their group is still up the hill waiting for mountain rescue. The emergency services would then deposit them back at midnight with trainers (or even sandals) and without a clue.

               Because we all knew our team would never get up (and back down) a mountain, we felt sure head office would not have arranged a day doing that. It had been kept a secret, I was hoping for something that involved sitting inside. A wine tasting afternoon perhaps. Then the postcode came through for the drivers. A quick google search revealed the truth. We were to be axe throwing.

               It is worth pointing out that not only were we spending the afternoon throwing sharp objects, it was also on an afternoon the Met Office had issued a yellow weather warning for wind. This was shaping up to be a horrific afternoon. Then when we arrived, a second surprise. Not only axe throwing but clay pigeon shooting too.

               The younger team members had a lovely time, the rest of us less so. Having no upper body strength meant my axes failed to reach the board, let alone stick into it. They just dropped on the floor; I noticed the instructor moving away. The shooting was not much better, it hurt my boney shoulder and I gave up after the first three attempts.

I went and sat on a picnic bench (partially sheltered from the storm) and waited for lunch. A colleague joined me and asked if I wanted a swig from their flask which I was informed contained ‘adult squash’. We were hoping for a barbeque but instead somebody drove up with a bag of sandwiches from Tesco.

               After lunch it was announced that we were going to be split into teams and there would be a competition. Predictably, my axes all fell on the floor again. I was offered the chance to use ‘junior axes’ which were smaller and lighter but still didn’t stick in the board. The shooting went marginally better, against all the odds I actually hit one although I didn’t notice it happen. It wouldn’t surprise me if the instructor just made it up as he felt sorry for me.

               The rest of the team did better so we only came sixth out of eight. Without me, it would have been far more successful, something that both me and my colleagues would have agreed on. The way back saw us getting lost down country lanes with a malfunctioning sat nav so we were late back but this meant we missed the afternoon shift so there was at least one positive to the day.

               In the debrief the boss told us that it might not be possible to do that again as we will be too busy going into Christmas. What a shame.

Recently I became part of a new management team at work and as a result we were all sent on a training course. Specifically, a twelve-day long series of training courses run by the people from human resources.

If when reading this, you think, ‘twelve days of management training? That sounds terrible’. Well, you would be right. The courses were held in a non-descript business hotel by a motorway junction and started at 9am each day. We covered scintillating topics like ‘what is our company culture?’, ‘appropriate tone & posture’ and ‘managing confidently part three’. The whereabouts of managing confidently part one and managing confidently part two were unclear.

Before attending, I sent an email to the organisation asking about the expected dress code. After all, twelve days is a long time to be over/underdressed. I once knew somebody who confused ‘dress fancy’ with ‘fancy dress’ and came in a clown costume while everyone else was in ballgowns. The answer I got back was the dress code is business casual. That was a term I had to Google.

Wikipedia tells me ‘Business casual is an ambiguously defined Western dress code that is generally considered casual wear but with smart (in the sense of “well dressed”) components of a proper lounge suit from traditional informal wear, adopted for white-collar workplaces’. Casual wear with smart components of traditional informal wear? Not a clue. Turns out they meant a suit without a tie. Can’t we just have a dress code that isn’t written in code?

As I had been with the company for a while, I was excused from several of the introductory sessions meaning I lost the opportunity to tell a group of strangers my favourite childhood toy (Lego) or demonstrate my favourite dance move (does anyone actually have a favourite dance move? Perhaps a slightly out of time clap?) The news I would miss the icebreakers was one of the best pieces of news I have ever received. Only slightly dampened by the realisation that I could have stayed at home longer rather than rattling around this business hotel staffed by people who wished all their patrons had also stayed at home longer.

It wasn’t all bad, the company had given us an unlimited food and drink budget for the entire twelve days. This sounded great until I realised it meant I had to spend my evenings with my new colleagues and the people from human resources, after spending the entire day listening to them discussing the application of corporate slogans for the last ten hours. At one point I pretended to have an important phone call just so I could get away and sit in the toilet for ten minutes. From that point on, I went out each evening and had takeaway on a bench against the backdrop of lorries racing down the motorway.

The staff at the business hotel (who loved us all so much) had lost my booking meaning I had to change rooms five times over the twelve days. The plus side of this is that I collected so many complementary biscuits and bottles of shampoo that I could start a market stall, providing to the catering and hygiene needs of the long-distance lorry drivers.

Things came to a head on day eleven. By this point we had been divided into groups about a trillion times and none of us could even look at another flipchart let alone write on it. The idea of listening to any more lengthy TED talks from bright eyed Californians made us feel physically sick and we were about to commit acts of violence if it was suggested we should stand up and shake our bodies to inject some energy one more time.

The people from human resources made the mistake of asking the group (first thing in the morning) ‘so, how are you feeling?’ and the gruff man next to me said ‘if you want me to be honest, I am sick of training, I am sick of this place and I am sick of you, all of you’. Although I would have been too polite to say it, I agreed with every word and so did everyone else. The people from human resources went out to make a phone call and told us the training would be ‘paused’ until after Christmas. They then hurriedly put away pictures of animals they had cut from calendars (presumably today’s ice breaker) and scuttled out.

Turns out that the thing that built our team was our collective loathing of team building. Quite whether 12 days in a business hotel helped or hindered this realisation is another matter…

               Seven weeks passed by uneventfully. I got good at finding out which of my local shops sold the cheapest paracetamol (just in case anyone cares, it was the Co-op) and took a couple of tablets each day which allowed me to sleep and get on with my life.

               The dentist had tipped me off that the surgery wouldn’t be easy so I decided to book a room in a nearby hotel meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about the two trains home. I also switched my rota with my colleagues so I could get the time off needed. So far, so good.

               The day before, a text message arrived reminding me of my appointment and asking me to fill in an online form. I was expecting it to be all the usual personal details, name, address, date of birth but instead the only thing they wanted from me was to agree to the longest list of terms and conditions I have ever seen. Pages and pages of small print written in such a way that a lawyer would be needed to translate but it was the next day and there was no way I could afford the legal fees to have all that explained so I did what any sensible person would do and just agreed. What I have agreed to remains unclear. I might have said it was ok to implant the tooth of a gerbil into my jaw or I was fine with the dentist doing the surgery blindfolded. No idea.

               I got to the surgery by taxi, I wasn’t going to make the mistake of walking for an hour again past the out-of-date billboards. The taxi only took cash which made it feel like I was in 1998 (possibly the last time the events advertised on the billboards were updated). I was then driven to a cashpoint and somehow remembered my pin. My destination was right out in the suburbs of Bradford, and I was nearly an hour early. I had planned to wander around but it was raining so I went in and resigned myself to a long wait.

               The check in process was incredibly complicated. The patients were directed to scan a QR code then fill in an online form via a mobile phone. Being a rebel, I decided not to bother with any of that and just speak to a receptionist. The woman behind the reception desk looked genuinely affronted to have somebody speaking to her, I couldn’t work out if she was more likely to burst into tears or reach over the counter and hit me over the head. Perhaps this is why the QR code system was put into place, to protect the patients from the receptionist.

               I knew I had an hour to wait so I opened up my overnight bag and got out some things to keep me occupied. As soon as I had done that, I was summoned to see the dentist, almost 45 minutes earlier than I expected. This may be the only recorded case of a dentist running ahead of schedule in medical history. The dental nurse proceeded to loudly sigh as I rushed to put everything back in my overnight bag at breakneck speed dropping things onto the floor as I went.

               The surgery I was being referred to, was a private clinic but paid for by the NHS. Perhaps this is part of the reason the dentist was in such a bad mood. He didn’t introduce himself to me or make any attempt to create small talk. Instead, the opening line was “which tooth am I extracting?” If I am honest, that is the kind of thing I had expected to be in my referral notes and perhaps it was, but angry dentist was too angry to read them. I told him which tooth it was, he looked in my mouth for approximately two seconds, said ‘L7’ to the dental nurse and then they both immediately walked out.

               I sat and waited for a while for them to return. Except they didn’t. A while later, the dental nurse came in with another patient and asked why I was still there. I said I was waiting for my extraction. No, she sighed, today was just a consultation.

               At no point did I have any understanding that this was just a consultation and would need to make another appointment for the actual extraction. This task fell to the receptionist who now seemed on the verge of a complete breakdown due to having to speak to me for a second time in the same day. Since I was being classed as an emergency, she told me I could get an appointment very quickly… I was hoping this could be today or maybe tomorrow… No, very quickly meant waiting another five weeks.

               I don’t know what is more annoying, waiting another five weeks or needing to go back to Yorkshire’s least happy medical facility. At least next time, I will know what to expect, the taxi is cash only and there is no need to unpack an overnight bag in the waiting room.

               One day last spring I found a tooth in a scone I had previously been enjoying. On further inspection, it was discovered that the tooth was mine. I was not registered with a dentist at the time, and I was about to move to another part of the country, so I decided to do nothing and just ignore it.

               For an entire year, this plan worked nicely. Dental work is complicated, expensive and if there is no pain, there is no problem. Until there is pain. A lot of pain.

               I woke up in sheer agony at 2am one Tuesday morning and knew it had to get sorted that day. I typed ‘emergency dentist’ into Google and I got a choice of appointments for the next day. The nearest one to me was in Bradford. Of course, Bradford isn’t that close, it involved two lengthy train journeys, but it had to be done.

               I don’t know Bradford very well and even though I had an appointment I needed to get to, I decided to walk (it was an hour from the train station). I also didn’t have a map. Quite why I made that decision is not too clear in hindsight. So, I went strolling along a main road past generic retail parks, office complexes and billboards advertising concerts that took place months ago. It took a long time for me to realise I had no idea if I was going in the right direction. I decided to ask a friendly passer by but there weren’t any. So instead, I popped into a place that seemed to specialise in fixing broken ambulances. Against all the odds, not only was I going the right way, but the dentist was also just around the corner.

               The surgery was out in the suburbs and surrounded by the most eccentric range of other businesses. A place selling flavoured tea (that also repaired mobile phones), a wedding firework specialist and a very large gravestone engraving showroom. I was starving and with some time to spare before my appointment, I visited a corner shop.

               What to eat before a dental appointment is always a tricky question. As I wasn’t at home, I wouldn’t have been able to clean my teeth so wanted food that wouldn’t get stuck. I went round the shop so many times trying to solve the conundrum that the shopkeeper came over, clearly thinking I had lost my mind. When I told him I was looking for a recommendation for an item of soft food I could just suck, he must have felt his suspicion was correct. I decided that Wotsits were the solution. This could be the first time in history that a problem has been solved by Wotsits.

               The appointment itself was a disappointment. The dentist wasn’t able to take the tooth out, it would need to be referred to a specialist dental surgeon. So, x-rays were taken, forms filled in and paracetamol prescribed. However, since I had come a long way, the dentist promised to get me an emergency appointment.

               Two days later the details of the emergency appointment arrived via text message. It was in seven weeks’ time…. It seems my understanding of the word emergency is different from theirs.

               Still, at least progress was being made…

To be continued

               As a non-driver, I have to spend a lot of time on trains. I am so used to the overcrowding, late running services and strike action that it has stopped bothering me. However, something happened to me at King’s Cross last week, which was a completely new experience.

               The queue at the ticket office was about a hundred miles long, only one desk was open, and everyone seemed to have more questions than a quiz show host. So, I gave up and used the machine instead. Ticket machines are very hard to operate, they claim to be touch screen, but I find you have to hit it so hard it injures your hand, in order to get anywhere.

               One tip I would give anyone getting a train from a major city is get there early. That way there is a much higher chance of getting a seat (if you are incredibly fortunate, a seat not covered in litter or wet patches). Another tip is the unreserved carriages are often much quieter than the carriages with reservations.

               I wasn’t quite so lucky with the 1pm service, the train was packed with rugby fans returning from the Challenge Cup final. An announcement was made saying that due to a change in train the reservation system was being turned off and people would be able to sit anywhere. Except this meant being able to sit nowhere.

               There was no chance I was going to stand for three hours (at a cost of £67) so I got back off the train and went to the help desk. My ticket was changed for the 1.30pm service and a new reservation issued. No problem, I thought as I went to find a sandwich that cost less than the price of a Ford Capri (not easy in a London train station).

               This time I was prepared. I was ready to dash as soon as the announcement was made. This time it was platform 4 and yet more rugby fans engulfed the platform with their chanting and flag waving. However, there was another problem here. The carriage I had my reservation for, didn’t actually exist. I walked along the platform twice to make sure I wasn’t going mad but there was no carriage B. There was only C, D, E & F.

               Now I was getting irritated and went to find a human being to moan at. I explained to the very patient man at the help desk that I didn’t understand the point of issuing reservations when the systems don’t work, and the carriages don’t exist. “Leave it with me”, he said, as he disappeared down the platform.

               Shortly after I was introduced to Michael (the train manager). I am never sure that train manager is any different from ticket inspector but in this case, Michael was very useful and told me he had found me a seat. I was expecting to be put somewhere in a corridor by the toilet next to a bicycle, large dog and somebody vomiting but no. I was to be upgraded to first class.

               I have never been in first class, but it felt like Michael was upgrading a lot of people who had been complaining, presumably just to shut them up (it worked!) I got a leather seat and fold down table, there was also somewhere to put my luggage that was close enough I could actually see it. Then another perk, a free warm sausage roll and an apple juice. This was very exciting. I regretted the train station sandwich immediately, thinking I could have better used the money on an around the world cruise. The rest of the experience I missed by falling asleep.

               On departure of the station, I pondered if I would pay the extra to go in first class on future journeys. It seemed to be about an extra £45 which is a lot for a sausage roll and bottle of juice. On the other hand, would I go to the help desk next time there is a problem with the reservation system? Absolutely.

I heard a newspaper columnist being interviewed on the radio this week who felt that dogs are now treated better than children. Her point was that dogs get free biscuits in cafes and restaurants but there are never enough highchairs for her baby. Another of her points is that she feels that nobody minds if dogs are allowed to roam but kids running around is seen as very antisocial.

It is certainly true that dogs are welcome in almost every hospitality business now and this wasn’t true a decade ago. There was a huge demand for puppies during lockdown which now means a very large proportion of dogs are very excited as they are young, whereas the birth rate is falling so there are fewer babies than there used to be.

As somebody who works in the hospitality industry this got me thinking, which is the better-behaved group – children or dogs?

Firstly children, I think it is true to say that a very large number of people do not approve of children running around in pubs and restaurants. They can be very loud, and it is dangerous if they collide with people carrying hot coffee, but dogs can also be very loud and jump at people carrying hot coffee.

In order to keep the children calm, we have tried buying board games (but they all get broken) or colouring pencils (but they end up colouring in the menus, chair legs and walls). The advent of the electronic babysitter – the iPad – has been a gamechanger here. Now almost every child over the age of three just stares at a screen which keeps them quiet and out of trouble. It wasn’t long ago I saw a set of 18-month-old twins who both had their own iPads, why they couldn’t share despite both watching the same thing was unclear. Perhaps iPads for dogs is an idea, iPaws?

Dogs can also be a complete menace. Large dogs jump up at strangers and steal food from tables, smaller dogs bark at everything and knock over their water bowls. All dogs can cause people to trip over their leads, assuming they are on a lead and not just roaming around.

Of course, the real menace is not the children or dogs but the adults who raise them. Many adults (particularly after a drink) seem not to notice what the smaller members of their party are doing. Although it is also true that adults without children or dogs can also be very loud or collide with people carrying hot coffee.

I have also never had a dog or child order a fish sandwich but with no bread and cheese instead of fish. I have also never had a dog or child arrive an entire year too early and get angry because we don’t have any space for them.

So in conclusion, yes some children behave badly, some dogs also behave badly but with some proper training this can all be changed. The behaviour of the adults is, sadly, a lost cause…

It is well known that there is a shortage of staff in the food service industry, it is not that hard for anyone to get a job carrying plates if that is what they want. Perhaps that is why so many people seem to not try too hard during their application process.

               At the rural pub all our job adverts are placed on the website, which contains a role description, person specification, salary details and information on how to apply. Yet people send messages through the website asking questions that can be found on the webpage they are currently looking at.

               Another group of people still come round with CVs on bits of paper, many not knowing if we are recruiting or not. Sometimes they want to apply for roles that don’t exist. These bits of paper are often crumpled, handwritten and full of spelling mistakes.

               Whilst honesty is an important quality, the sheer amount of honesty in these applications is constantly extraordinary. “What qualities can you bring to the position?” is a source of genuine amusement.

• “I like to talk about the weather”.
• “I am not very late as often as I used to be”.
• “I did some boxing before my injury so I can throw out the drunks”.

There was a candidate who wrote they wanted to work in the pub as they found the bartender attractive and another who admitted to liking a drink and wanted a job for the discounted alcohol.

Another question that can be very revealing is in the employment history section. I received one recently from somebody who admitted to failing to last more than three days in any of their last five jobs. Reasons for leaving included “It smelled”, “too far from the bus stop” and “they tried to make me serve meat”.

Other reasons for leaving previous jobs I have come across include,

• “Three months for GBH”.
• “Fired” (no further information provided).
• “I discovered my manager had slept with my brother”.

Then there was a candidate who applied to the pub but wanted to work from home….

Yes, the industry needs more staff but we are not that desperate.