Ladies and gentlemen waltzing in a splendid ballroom aboard an ocean liner: this is not a fantasy. A family gathering in a French restaurant, with a special waiter asking us if we would like some freshly ground pepper on our fish: this is not a dream. The job of the hospitality industry is to make the perfect meals and the perfect accommodations a reality. We all understand the allure of the hospitality industry, and many high-paying jobs are available in hotels, restaurants, clubs, bars, cruise ships, cafeterias, etc., catering to guests’ every whim. Not much education is required. But learning English is important. Why?

Out of curiosity, years ago I boarded an ocean liner shortly before departure. Pushing through an unmarked door, I descended to a staff-only level. On this level, the concrete corridors were painted battleship grey, just like in the army. The opulence of the upstairs was in stark contrast to the concrete downstairs. People generally don’t realize that the business end of the hotel industry is a quasi-military operation. Lack of communication between staff members and misunderstandings between customers and staff are therefore not acceptable. For good communication, staff members are often expected to have a good working knowledge of English, a language that is understood by people from all over the world.

I have seen the same in good restaurants. Upstairs, diners enjoy dim lighting and soft music. Downstairs, the manager and assistant manager conduct business in a sensible way under bare bulbs. The amount of food purchased each month by a successful restaurant could feed a small army, and much of the work below has to do with purchasing and supply.

To learn the ropes, new employees must know enough English to ask questions of experienced employees who have been with the establishment for many years. This is how newcomers learn about procedures and how to handle customers. A receptionist at a hotel or spa front desk should speak English well enough to take customers’ names, addresses, and credit card information. Reception work is a position of responsibility that requires a high level of fluency in English.

Most of the customers speak English, so waiters and order takers must also speak English. If the waiter wrote in 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 can’t understand what the customer wants, ask questions, and respond fluently, they won’t last long in the hospitality business.

For hospitality employees who work in kitchens or other behind-the-scenes areas, English may be the only language all coworkers 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 at a Korean restaurant. Since he was smart, he took it upon himself to instruct 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. He asked me to teach him enough English to show the new employee how to use the dishwashing equipment at the Korean restaurant. How could my student have done this work if he had not been studying English at the time?

Customers can be hard to please. For example, a vegetarian restaurant menu included only one salad dressing: carrot and ginger. The customer, however, asked the waitress if another salad dressing was available. ‘Yes’, the waitress helpfully replied, ‘we also have tahini dressing’. Remember how James Bond, aka 007 in the movies, preferred his martinis goal shake not scrambled? Patience and a good working knowledge of English are certainly required for hospitality workers to deal with special customer requests.

I myself worked one summer as a waitress, when I was still a college student. I served lunch in the executive dining room of a large corporation. Executives entered and sat around large circular tables, each of which seated ten people. One afternoon I was serving up 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 move it slightly each time I leaned forward to get a small bowl into its correct position, directly in front of each customer. As I moved around the table like this, the entire tray started to tilt towards the customers, so I quickly leaned back to get my balance again.

Well, I don’t know how it happened, but one of those bowls filled to the brim with hot soup went flying off the edge of the tray. The bowl tipped over in the air and the red soup spilled into a customer’s lap, all over his brown business suit. He couldn’t believe his eyes! My heart stopped beating.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to the man with tomato soup in his pants. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to the executive dining room hostess, my supervisor, who had jumped up from her chair across the room to serve the customer. The businessman, who remained seated and did not look at me, said in a low voice: ‘These things are going to happen.’

The hostess offered the customer a free dry cleaning for his dirty suit, which he accepted. She told me: ‘Everything will be fine’. She motioned for me to sit to the side and rest for a while. The customer in this case was very chivalrous and took no offense at this lunchtime catastrophe. I can’t say that my knowledge of English saved my job, but what if I didn’t know how to apologize properly?

There are many jobs available for hospitality workers. For example, an article in the New York Times on October 17, 2008, he described the departure of an ocean liner from New York Harbor the previous day. The cruise ship was full, with 1,800 passengers paying fares ranging from $2,992 to $25,445 for the transatlantic voyage. The crew of 1,016 included 107 cooks, four fitness instructors, a disc jockey, and ten “host gentlemen” to escort the unaccompanied women to onboard events. On the Cunard Line website, which owns many of these majestic ocean-going vessels, you can view job openings for hotel management officers, butlers, waiters and waitresses, housekeeping and bedroom staff, chefs, junior maids, and wine managers. . Every day, restaurants and hotels around the world post job offers in the same categories.

Many of these positions require very little formal education and offer high salaries. Such jobs have allowed many people to emigrate or earn enough money to go to school. Due to the almost military nature of the hospitality business, good communication skills are a must and good English is often a requirement.

Copyright © 2008 Barbara A. Français