Other office-employes take their meals in the officers' dining-room, from the same bill of fare used in the main dining-room.
Chambermaids, bell-boys, and other "help," are served in the "helps' hall," from a separate bill of fare. Their food is good, as a rule; when it is not, the fault usually lies with the chef in the kitchen. All proprietors want their help to have good food.
The housekeeper can do much to make the help comfortable. She can see that their rooms are kept clean and sweet, and free from vermin. She can give them soft pillows and plenty of warm covering. It is her duty to add to their comfort in every way she can.
In a majority of hotels, the help are roomed and fed equally as well as are the patrons.
Requirements of a Housekeeper.
Every profession or trade is made up of two classes: the apprentice and the skilled workman. The young woman looking for a position as hotel housekeeper should not forget that careful training is fully as important and necessary in her chosen vocation as it is in medicine or cooking; that she must learn by slow and wearisome experience what it has taken years for the skilled housekeeper to acquire.
The apprentice may stumble on the road to success and may even fall by the wayside. In order to succeed, she must give her time wholly to her occupation. She must be thankful for the successes that come to her and not fret over the failures, remembering that hotel housekeeping, like all other occupations, demands experience, patience, and perseverance, as well as skill, in its followers.
The profession is overcrowded with novices to-day; they are the ones that have demoralized the profession—if the word, profession, may be applied to hotel housekeeping. The failure of many housekeepers is due to the lack of proper training; it is only the skilled housekeeper that wins lasting approval.