Closing dining rooms by blocking doors, and offering staff a £20 reward for staying on to cook a meal for American guests who arrive late, are just some of the ways hospitality owners in rural areas say they have had to cope with a "recruitment crisis".
Hotel and restaurant owners say, despite things easing in recent months, they still regularly struggled to find enough staff. This results in reduced opening hours, or even the cancellation of ‘Gourmet’ nights (no riff raff) due to a lack of chefs.
Basil Fawlty, 45, who manages Fawlty Towers Hotel, in Torquay, said he sometimes faced working an entire weekend alone, because his wife’s toe nail was macheteing its way through the nerve, and there were no other staff to help him. “Though, to be honest,’ he said, “They are all absolutely useless. It would be quicker to train a chimp”.
Mr Fawlty said staff shortages meant he had to take up every role in the hotel at once, from checking in guests to putting up pictures and moose heads, organising the fire alarm tests and typing the menus – and then running the bar. "It's so hard to find people," he said. A view shared by one guest, a Mr Wareing, who told us all he wanted to do was order ”A Gin and Orange, a lemon squash and a Scotch and water”, but there never seemed to be anyone available. Long term resident, Major Gowen, agrees. "I don't know why we bother," he said,' There a Hotel in Eastbourne... Um, can't remember what I was going to say.Is it time to open the bar?".
"It is unreal at the minute.” added Mr. Fawlty,” I put a job post up a couple of weeks ago in Country Life and Vanity Fair. It took me two weeks just to find one applicant, and he was from Barcelona. I even tried asking my wife’s friend Audrey on Facebook. To be honest I would have been better off trying the cat! She was probably busy perming her ears or something”. He added the rural location and "unsociable hours" made it trickier for some people but said he "loved coming to work", apart from the other staff, and meeting the customers.
Polly Sherman, whose duties include cleaning the rooms, waiting at table and impersonating the owner's wife when her friends come round for drinks after she has had a row with her husband, said it felt like the hotel had been in "perma-crisis" ever since Terry the Chef left. Mr. Carnegie, a public health inspector, added “The crisis is deeper than people realise. When I first visited Fawlty Towers I found a catalogue of contraventions of basic food and hygiene safety regulations. Then, to cap it all, they served me a rat in the box of biscuits with the Cheeseboard.
When questioned about this incident, all Mr. Fawlty had to say was, “Well, at least it was a fresh rat!”.
