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.