I was staying in a B&B last night and found myself having breakfast this morning with a Hotel Inspector. He didn’t quite have the style of Alex Polizzi, pictured above (of the current Channel Five Hotel Inspector series) but it was still the most interesting early morning conversation I’ve had this week. I’m not sure which of the various organisations that bestow stars he works for but it probably doesn’t make much difference. So, during an especially well-presented breakfast, I asked: What exactly does a real life hotel inspector do?

To start with, he explained that he spends most of the week away from home. The glamour of his working life is already diminished in my mind. Some establishments, those with lower ratings, can be checked out in the space of a day-visit, he tells me, whereas others, hotels or B&Bs with high ratings, require an overnight stay. ‘There are a lot of services to sample in some places’, he comments — and lots of hidden spaces to investigate, it turns out. One visit last week led to the deregistering of an establishment after he moved the bed away from the wall and exposed ‘an inch of dust’. The appeal of his work has now completely gone for me. So I’m surprised to learn from the How to become a AAA hotel inspector webpage , that it ‘is a much sought-after job, with a limited number of openings’.

Maybe it’s to do with all the free dinners. I wonder though how it feels to eat in order to evaluate. Do you have to choose things you might not otherwise want? He is obliged to order room service, try out restaurants, and sit in bars. Not for the leisure we would normally associate with consumption in these places but to scrutinize the menu, and the manner and mood of waiting staff. His own experience in catering, from waiter to chef, goes a long way in helping him to judge what’s on his plate, and how it’s brought to him. Yet his current job has taken him to the other side of the bar or table. This places him in the curious position of knowing the trades he is assessing whilst having to act like a consumer in doing so.

Even when he retires to his room, puts on his pyjamas, and gets into bed after what might have been a long, hard day, his work is far from over. Is the mattress firm? Is it even across the bed? Do the springs squeak if he moves around a lot? Can you hear the people in the room next door? Restful, it isn’t.

As I finish my coffee, I ask him what he does for a holiday. I don’t suppose you want to stay in a fancy hotel? I say. ‘Not really’, he replies ‘I quite like self-catering.’

cash registers by Lynne Pettinger

Though they don’t half make it hard. I’ve been looking in all sorts of fancy-pants shops for door handles, one’s that don’t even have to turn: the simplest of technologies, and fundamental to the effectiveness of a door. One shopkeeper promises to call once they’ve checked stock, but never does. One looks at me in shock, “we do not DO doorhandles” he booms, forbiddingly and indeed forebodingly for the future of his empty shop. In the next shop, she’s on the phone. The one after used to sell door handles but doesn’t anymore, the next might sell them in the future as quite a few people have been asking. I end up on Ebay.

There’s a little more to this post than just a rant about bad customer service. It’s not insightful to say that to ‘survive’ the recession, a business must deliver on customer service, especially when it is selling luxury. It makes me sound like a cheap consultant. Why the failure to serve then, in a month where fear of business failure must be present in all these traders minds? Well, to some extent its about class; there’s a difficulty in delivering service when you’re the boss and when customer service is coded as low status. It is also about the greater demands for emotional labour produced by the recession: pretty pink presents for women don’t sell themselves in a recession; this makes it hard for ephemera shops to survive. And for the shopkeeper to put on a friendly face now involves forgetting creditors pressing, it demands not thinking about the newly empty shop next door, not reading newspaper advice columns telling customers how to cut back spending by not buying the very things your shop sells. It’s harder emotional labour. And if you never needed customer service skills pre-recession, you’ve a whole lot more to learn now even as you’ve a lot more to forget about. So if a small trader in a fripperies shop tries to smile at you; be nice back – it’s harder for her than you imagine.