It Is a Proper Job, Dummy

Let’s start here: hospitality is a proper job. It’s one of the most proper jobs there is.

But somewhere along the way, this country forgot that.

We forgot that the person handing you your morning coffee isn’t your servant. The bartender pulling your pint isn’t killing time before their “real career.” The chef in the back isn’t a dropout, a delinquent, or a misfit with no direction - though we might look like all three on a good day.

We’re professionals. Skilled ones. We work longer hours, in hotter rooms, under more pressure than most people could stomach for half a shift. And we do it with a smile, a wink, and a shot at the end of the night. But say that out loud in Britain, and someone will still cock their head and ask, “Yeah, but when are you going to get a proper job?”

Mate, this is the proper job. You just don’t understand what it takes.

The invisible class

Hospitality people are like stagehands in the national theatre of everyone else’s good time.

We’re the ones who make the lights come on, the music play, the pints pour, the plates land hot, the birthdays go right, and the weddings not fall apart. We are the connective tissue of joy.

And yet, in Britain, we’re invisible.

We serve millions every day, yet we’re treated like ghosts. The job titles are somehow lowercase in people’s minds: waiter, bartender, cleaner, chef, barista. Not professions - just placeholders. Something to do before you “move on.”

That phrase - move on - is poison. It implies that what we do is temporary, disposable. It’s not. This is a trade. The craft of making people feel good. And if that sounds soft to you, you’ve clearly never tried to run a full restaurant on a Friday night when three tables are late, the fryer’s dead, and the new KP’s crying in the alley.

Hospitality isn’t a stopgap. It’s a discipline. The problem is, we live in a country that’s lost respect for craft itself.

The cultural rot

In Italy, a waiter is a lifer. A professional.

In France, a chef isn’t “in service” - he is service.

In Japan, a barman spends thirty years perfecting the way he stirs a Martini.

In Britain? You tell someone you work in hospitality and they look at you like you’re failing a test.

We’ve built an economy that worships offices — keyboards, lanyards, LinkedIn bios — and sneers at anyone who works with their hands, their feet, or their heart.

We’ve made being good at people feel like being bad at ambition.

The logic is backward. The irony’s cosmic. Because hospitality — real hospitality — demands every skill corporate life pretends to value: teamwork, resilience, creativity, leadership, logistics, empathy, performance, timing, emotional intelligence, salesmanship, finance, psychology, brand management, conflict resolution, design, operations, strategy.

You don’t think it’s a career? Run a 200-cover Saturday night on your own. Then tell me your middle-management “cross-functional synergies” compare.

The myth of the “student job”

It starts young. Parents tell their kids to get a bar job for the summer. Something to earn “beer money.” Then they tell them not to stay there. Not to get stuck.

Stuck where, exactly? Among people who know how to work hard, connect fast, read a room, and find humour in the chaos? Among people who can turn a hangover into a performance and a bad night into a comeback story?

Hospitality teaches real-world skills faster than any university course could dream of.

You learn pressure. You learn humility. You learn what it means to be part of a team that has to make things happen right now, not after a meeting, not after a feasibility study.

And yet we still call it “unskilled.” That word should be banned from the English language.

Try explaining that to someone who’s just navigated a Saturday night service with a full house, a broken till, and a staff no-show. “Unskilled”? That’s tactical warfare with plates and laughter as the soundtrack.

The mental cost

Hospitality people are adrenaline junkies, emotional athletes.

We give everything we’ve got, every night.

And the reason we sometimes look wrecked is because we are.

We’re running on fumes, coffee, nicotine, Red Bull, and the high that comes from pulling it off - the perfectly timed service, the crowd in flow, the night that hums like a machine and feels like a song.

But there’s a cost. Always is.

When the shift ends and the adrenaline drains, there’s nothing left. Just the echo. The silence after the music. That’s when it hits you — the exhaustion, the loneliness, the what-if.

And when people around you treat what you do like a joke, like a temporary phase, it compounds the burnout. You start to believe it yourself. You start to think maybe you’re the one who missed the memo.

That’s why this attitude - “get a proper job” is toxic. It kills pride. It breaks identity. It tells a whole generation of grafters that what they do doesn’t matter, when in fact it matters more than most.

The ecosystem of care

Hospitality, when it’s done right, is a love language.

It’s the art of making people feel something. Seen, welcome, fed, relaxed, alive.

You know the feeling when you walk into a pub and everything just clicks? The warmth, the noise, the smell of something frying, the music at just the right level, the sense that you could stay here forever and nothing bad would happen?

That’s no accident. That’s not luck. That’s craft. That’s a dozen people working in perfect sync to build you a moment that feels effortless.

That’s a career.

Hospitality people build those moments out of thin air, day after day. We create community from strangers, therapy from chaos, connection from nothing. We do it because we care. Not for the tips. Not for the free drinks. Not even for the paycheck (though Christ knows it could be better).

We do it because it’s what we’re wired to do. To host. To look after. To make things work.

That should be celebrated, not condescended to.

The British allergy to service

Here’s the ugly truth: the British have always had a weird relationship with service.

We like being served, we just don’t like the people who do the serving.

There’s a class hangover at play. The shadow of the upstairs-downstairs world. Service is fine, as long as it’s invisible. But the second someone takes pride in it, owns it, becomes too good at it, it makes us uncomfortable.

That’s why we tip so badly. Why we can’t look a waiter in the eye when they bring the bill. Why “customer is always right” has been twisted into an excuse for cruelty.

We’ve never reconciled our national identity with the idea that dignity and service can coexist. And that’s our loss. Because the best hospitality cultures, the ones that actually make people happy, come from countries that celebrate the art of looking after others.

Until we learn to respect service, we’ll keep losing good people to burnout, to other industries, or to countries that understand the game better than we do.

The real economy

Let’s be blunt: hospitality is one of the last human industries.

Everything else is being eaten by screens. AI, automation, remote work, digital detachment. But you can’t automate a smile. You can’t outsource connection. You can’t code the feeling of walking into your local and being known by name.

Hospitality is a pillar of the real economy, the part that runs on sweat, heart, and muscle memory. It’s one of the biggest employers in the UK. It feeds billions into the GDP. It gives young people their first taste of independence, and veterans their lifelong sense of purpose.

If that’s not a “proper job,” what the hell is?

Without us, the country doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, doesn’t socialise, doesn’t celebrate, doesn’t heal. The pubs close. The restaurants shutter. The high streets die. The joy leaks out of the cracks.

We are not a luxury. We’re infrastructure.

The career path nobody shows you

You can start in hospitality with nothing, and build everything.

You can go from KP to head chef, from bar-back to GM, from shift leader to owner. You can learn business, marketing, leadership, negotiation, supply chain, finance, design, brand. You can build an empire out of nothing but late nights and stubborn belief.

But we don’t show that story enough.

All we show are the reality-TV chefs, the posh-boy restaurateurs, and the PR fluff. No one talks about the career ladder that actually exists: the one built out of graft and loyalty and a refusal to quit.

You can make a life here. You can make a fortune. You can make something that matters.

But only if people start to see it as a life worth living - not a phase to escape from.

What happens when we stop pretending

When we finally start treating hospitality as a real career, not a consolation prize, everything changes.

The service improves. The talent stays. The culture matures. The pay rises. The pride returns.

Imagine a world where working a bar isn’t a Plan B, but a calling.

Where chefs aren’t driven out by exhaustion before thirty-five.

Where managers are trained, respected, and supported - not just promoted because they lasted the longest.

Where customers see you, really see you, and know that what you’re doing is a craft, not a convenience.

That world isn’t impossible. It just requires one collective act of reprogramming: stop looking down on the people who keep your world turning.

Why we stay

So why do we stay?

Because when it’s good, it’s really good.

Because there’s a magic in this job that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

It’s in the clink of glasses at last orders. The applause after a perfect service. The camaraderie of the after-shift cigarette. The way a place comes alive at 7 p.m. and exhales at 2 a.m.

It’s the sense that you’re part of something - a tribe, a family, a shared madness that makes sense only to those who’ve lived it.

You can’t explain that to someone who’s never been in it. You can only live it.

That’s why we stay. That’s why we fight for it. That’s why we need to keep telling people: this is a proper job. It’s real. It’s hard. It’s noble. And it’s worth every drop of sweat and every scar we’ve earned.

The next shift

So the next time someone asks, “When are you going to get a proper job?”

Smile. Pour them a pint. Hand it over slow. Look them dead in the eye and say: “This is a proper job, dummy.”

Then go back to doing what you do best - keeping the lights on in a world that’s forgotten how much it needs you.

Because when the dust settles, when the economy shifts, when the robots take the spreadsheets and the offices go dark, we’ll still be here.

Pouring, cooking, serving, laughing.

Making people feel alive.

The world doesn’t run on code. It runs on human contact.

And that, my friend, is hospitality - the last proper job there is.