George Orwell

DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON
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CHAPTER XIII

On my third day at the hotel the CHEF DU PERSONNEL, who had generally spoken to me in quite a pleasant tone, called me up and said sharply:

‘Here, you, shave that moustache off at once! NOM DE DIEU, who ever heard of a PLONGEUR with a moustache?’

I began to protest, but he cut me short. ‘A PLONGEUR with a moustache —nonsense! Take care I don’t see you with it tomorrow.’

On the way home I asked Boris what this meant. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You must do what he says, MON AMI. No one in the hotel wears a moustache, except the cooks. I should have thought you would have noticed it. Reason? There is no reason. It is the custom.’

I saw that it was an etiquette, like not wearing a white tie with a dinner-jacket, and shaved off my moustache. Afterwards I found out the explanation of the custom, which is this: waiters in good hotels do not wear moustaches, and to show their superiority they decree that PLONGEURS shall not wear them either; and the cooks wear their moustaches to show their contempt for the waiters.

This gives some idea of the elaborate caste system existing in a hotel. Our staff, amounting to about a hundred and ten, had their prestige graded as accurately as that of soldiers, and a cook or waiter was as much above a PLONGEUR as a captain above a private. Highest of all came the manager, who could sack anybody, even the cooks. We never saw the PATRON, and all we knew of him was that his meals had to be prepared more carefully than that of the customers; all the discipline of the hotel depended on the manager. He was a conscientious man, and always on the lookout for slackness, but we were too clever for him. A system of service bells ran through the hotel, and the whole staff used these for signalling to one another. A long ring and a short ring, followed by two more long rings, meant that the manager was coming, and when we heard it we took care to look busy.

Below the manager came the MAITRE D’HOTEL. He did not serve at table, unless to a lord or someone of that kind, but directed the other waiters and helped with the catering. His tips, and his bonus from the champagne companies (it was two francs for each cork he returned to them), came to two hundred francs a day. He was in a position quite apart from the rest of the staff, and took his meals in a private room, with silver on the table and two apprentices in clean white jackets to serve him. A little below the head waiter came the head cook, drawing about five thousand francs a month; he dined in the kitchen, but at a separate table, and one of the apprentice cooks waited on him. Then came the CHEF DU PERSONNEL; he drew only fifteen hundred francs a month, but he wore a black coat and did no manual work, and he could sack PLONGEURS and fine waiters. Then came the other cooks, drawing anything between three thousand and seven hundred and fifty ^ francs a month; then the waiters, making about seventy (...)

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