Kishore Singh: The other side of hospitality

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Ever since my son's friend joined the hotel industry as an intern at the flagship property of one of the country's leading hotel chains, we have been in a thrall. Initially, we couldn't believe that the boy who couldn't tell white bread apart from brown till a year ago should now be able to do some deft sauteing in the kitchen with olive oil and a few handy ingredients to churn out some brilliant snacks. "There," beamed my wife at him, "that's what a good boy is like," gazing daggers at our son who, of course, hasn't yet proceeded to boiling eggs for breakfast even though he's been living on his own for a year.

I thought I'd indulge the young man with some culinary delights from our larder, but nothing we put out before him could serve him as well as the hotel where he was temporarily employed. I fetched him some blue cheese, feta and stilton, but he'd had far better at the hotel, and in larger quantities. What were a few slices of ham or salami to the spread on which the trainees gorged themselves from the cold meats buffet? Ice cream, he reported, was on the house, gallons of it. Oh, and chocolates too!

"You mean," asked my wife, "that they give you any amount of chocolate to eat?" Our son's friend looked uncomfortably away at the question: "Not exactly, no," he muttered. "He just steals it," laughed my son at his uneasiness. "That's not true," exclaimed his son, "we just pocket the chocolates from guest bedrooms that would normally be thrown away."

Since this seemed baffling to us, he explained that when a guest checks out, the housekeeping staff "" and particularly the trainees assisting them "" help themselves liberally to the freebies provided by the management. "You mean...?" said my wife. Our son's friend nodded: "Yes, the complimentary chocolates, the fruits, the nuts, we eat them all, or stuff them into our pockets so we can pool them in to have a party in the locker room."

Since I have never eaten the complimentaries for fear of appearing greedy, this left me feeling extremely foolish, and my wife reprimanded me for stopping her from consuming what was clearly her due. Yet, our young friend clearly had more to say on the subject. "At parties," he said, "if something exclusive has been ordered, and very little is utilised, then we are allowed to have it all. Such as? "Well," he mused, "suppose you have ordered a handi of biryani, naturally a lot of it will be left over since there is so much food, that we have our own little party after the guests have departed."

And what about guests who do not leave tips? "We really curse them," he said, "even when we're smiling, we're hoping they'll fall down and break a leg." This did not seem a very polite thing, but our son's friend shocked us further by saying habitual bad-tippers were served rough and ready justice by having their food contaminated by those serving them with things so foul, they cannot be written here.

"Which must mean," I asked aghast, "that you also use guests' after-shaves and perfumes?" "Of course," he beamed, "and their hair gels, lipsticks "" everything!" "That is very well," said my wife, "but what about the bottles of shampoos and conditioners in the bathrooms?" "We pocket them all," he said, "I haven't had to buy soap in months thanks to the hotel I work in." At which my wife emptied out a bathroom cabinet of dozens of bottles to say, "At least now I will not have to hide these hotel shampoos and moisturisers that "" if I had not pinched them "" would have been pinched by the hotel's own staff anyway."