Labouring pains of the hospitality trade

It being Labour Day today, I’ve got labour on my mind.

Did you know, for instance, that the word comes from the Latin word “laborare”, which means “to be tired” ?

Which pretty much describes how I felt after laboriously walking through all seven halls of Food & Hotel Asia recently.

And as I roamed, I laboured with the thought of all the work and exertions that had gone into transporting all that equipment and paraphernalia associated with the business of hospitality to Singapore.

From massive kitchen equipment to splendid-looking beds to the most delicate crystal and chinaware, I thought of how they all had to be flown in, shipped and trucked to Singapore Expo.

I then imagined the labour of packing all that up again after the show – the painstaking chore of wrapping each crystal and porcelain piece one by one to ensure minimum breakage when the shipment arrives at the other end.

Then I thought of the entire labour-scape that goes into supporting the business of hospitality – it is somewhat bewildering, really. After all, if you strip the business down to its basics, it is just about bedding and feeding people when they are not at home. And what do we humans mostly do? We sleep, we eat and we drink – the stuff of everyday labours.

But the labour and manpower that creates the eco-system that supports the business is massively mind-boggling. At the Electrolux stand, which took centrestage at Hall 7, I saw what I thought was a massive shower for the biggest cooking pot I had ever seen attached to what looked like the bionic arms of a robot.

The pot was encased in a waterproof glass container and there were jets of water being sprayed on it from all angles while it rotated slowly.

When I asked Electrolux’s Number One Labour Man for North-east Asia, Geoff Mannering, if this was a Potted Shower, he gave me a dirty look which suggested I should go take a flying shower.

He then explained to me the labour that would usually go into washing a pot of this magnitude. This bionic-armlike-looking device eases the labour load. Plus, it is waterproof which means those delicate computerised settings that determine things like temperature and (I am guessing here) rate of rotation do not get damaged when “the men hose it down”.

He then showed me his range of refrigerators. I would like to have one of them at home except I would have to move my mother out of my spare room.

There’s one rather ingenious invention – it looks like an office desk with drawers. With this, the chef can be chopping and slicing on the “tabletop” and taking whatever ingredients he needs from each drawer-compartment.

I think every general manager should have one of these as his office desk as a reward for his labours – imagine, a 24×7 minibar right under your nose.

Then I thought of the labour that has to go into upkeeping service standards in the business which I predict will go rapidly downhill as more hotels keep getting built.

The shortage of staff means that more and more workers, to whom service is not a labour of love but a labour of inconvenience, are entering the industry – in other words, “let me serve you at your inconvenience, not mine”.

Then there’s us travellers who keep the wheels of hospitality turning as we fly and labour away in the name of business.

Last week, I knew I had been labouring too much when I showed up at a hotel reception in the wee hours of the morning and complained that my key card was, again, not working.

The staff looked at the card, looked up at me and said, “This card is not working?”

“Yes,” I said indignantly.

“But it’s not our key card,” she said.

I looked at the card and realised I had been trying to open a Sheraton hotel door with a Sofitel key card.

Ah, the labour that has gone into the commoditisation of the bedding experience.

Or is it just me suffering from the labour pains of a road warrior?

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe.

By: Yeoh Siew Hoon

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