WEALTHY WAITERS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 110, 3 February 1931, Page 13

WEALTHY WAITERS

Huge Incomes from Tips SOME AMAZING FIGURES The big incomes of some hotel porters and waiters were referred to at au inquiry in London into objections to the proposed setting up of a trade board for the catering trade. Mr. O. G. L. Du Cann (for the Hotels and Restaurants’ Association) quoted figures to show how high are salaries in the great London hotels. He said: The manager is a superior being and receives from •£2OOO to £4OOO a year, and is worth every penny of it. Ho is a difficult man to find, for the demand far exceeds the supply. The chef of one of those large hotels will be in receipt of a salary of £2OOO a year or more. Even the hotel porter at some of these hotels makes an income which runs into four figures. There was a porter of an hotel not many miles from Charing Cross who returned his annual income to the authorities at £2OOO, and received a polite note intimating that unfortunately they could not accept this low assumption of his income. There is another story of an hotel about 50 miles from Yeovil. At the end of the war the proprietor, having fallen on evil times, sold the hotel and called the head waiter, a man be had had with him for 40 years, telling him that he proposed to dispense with the man’s service.

The waiter replied that that was not going to happen as he had bought the hotel. “Oh,” said the proprietor, “then I suppose you will be the employer and I shall be the waiter?” To which the waiter replied, “Nothing of the kind. You are not good enough to be a waiter. You are going to be the employer, and I shall be the waiter.” (Laughter.) . Mr. Du Cann said the value of tips could not be estimated. Workers sometimes sought long hours and grumbled if they were sent off duty—for instance, in the case of a porter, who might finish just as remunerative guests were beginning to arrive by motor-car.