---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 13 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/13/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 13. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/13/"
---

# Down and Out in Paris and London

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Mar. 14, 2018
Date last updated: Mar. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180314

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Down and Out_
    _in Paris and London_

> O scathful harm, condicion of poverte!
       CHAUCER

> PENGUIN BOOKS

> First published by Victor Gollancz 1933

> Copyright 1933 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Down and Out in Paris and London_ by George Orwell]

## 13. Chapter XIII

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/13/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/13/#p-N

[¶0] 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:

[¶1] 'Here, you, shave that moustache off at once! _Nom de Dieu_, who ever
heard of a _plongeur_ with a moustache?'

[¶2] 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.'

[¶3] 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 a 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.'

[¶4] 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.

[¶5] 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 those 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.

[¶6] Below the manager came the _maître d'hôtel_. 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 francs a day in tips, besides a small retaining
fee; then the laundresses and sewing-women; then the apprentice waiters,
who received no tips, but were paid seven hundred and fifty francs a
month; then the _plongeurs_, also at seven hundred and fifty francs;
then the chambermaids, at five or six hundred francs a month; and lastly
the _cafetiers_, at five hundred a month. We of the _cafeterie_ were the
very dregs of the hotel, despised and _tutoied_ by everyone.

[¶7] There were various others—the office employees, called generally
couriers, the storekeeper, the cellarman, some porters and pages, the
ice man, the bakers, the nightwatchman, the doorkeeper. Different jobs
were done by different races. The office employees and the cooks and
sewing-women were French, the waiters Italians and Germans (there is
hardly such a thing as a French waiter in Paris), the _plongeurs_ of
every race in Europe, besides Arabs and negroes. French was the lingua
franca, even the Italians speaking it to one another.

[¶8] All the departments had their special perquisites. In all Paris hotels
it is the custom to sell the broken bread to bakers for eight sous a
pound, and the kitchen scraps to pigkeepers for a trifle, and to divide
the proceeds of this among the _plongeurs_. There was much pilfering,
too. The waiters all stole food—in fact, I seldom saw a waiter trouble
to eat the rations provided for him by the hotel—and the cooks did it
on a larger scale in the kitchen, and we in the _cafeterie_ swilled
illicit tea and coffee. The cellarman stole brandy. By a rule of the
hotel the waiters were not allowed to keep stores of spirits, but had to
go to the cellarman for each drink as it was ordered. As the cellarman
poured out the drinks he would set aside perhaps a teaspoonful from each
glass, and he amassed quantities in this way. He would sell you the
stolen brandy for five sous a swig if he thought he could trust you.

[¶9] There were thieves among the staff, and if you left money in your coat
pockets it was generally taken. The doorkeeper, who paid our wages and
searched us for stolen food, was the greatest thief in the hotel. Out of
my five hundred francs a month, this man actually managed to cheat me of
a hundred and fourteen francs in six weeks. I had asked to be paid
daily, so the doorkeeper paid me sixteen francs each evening, and, by
not paying for Sundays (for which of course payment was due), pocketed
sixty-four francs. Also, I sometimes worked on a Sunday, for which,
though I did not know it, I was entitled to an extra twenty-five francs.
The doorkeeper never paid this either, and so made away with another
seventy-five francs. I only realized during my last week that I was
being cheated, and, as I could prove nothing, only twenty-five francs
were refunded. The doorkeeper played similar tricks on any employee who
was fool enough to be taken in. He called himself a Greek, but in
reality he was an Armenian. After knowing him I saw the force of the
proverb 'Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don't
trust an Armenian.'

[¶10] There were queer characters among the waiters. One was a gentleman—a
youth who had been educated at a university, and had had a well-paid job
in a business office. He had caught a venereal disease, lost his job,
drifted, and now considered himself lucky to be a waiter. Many of the
waiters had slipped into France without passports, and one or two of
them were spies—it is a common profession for a spy to adopt. One day
there was a fearful row in the waiters' dining-room between Morandi, a
dangerous-looking man with eyes set too far apart, and another Italian.
It appeared that Morandi had taken the other man's mistress. The other
man, a weakling and obviously frightened of Morandi, was threatening
vaguely.

[¶11] Morandi jeered at him. 'Well, what are you going to do about it? I've
slept with your girl, slept with her three times. It was fine. What can
you do, eh?'

[¶12] 'I can denounce you to the secret police. You are an Italian spy.'

[¶13] Morandi did not deny it. He simply produced a razor from his tail pocket
and made two swift strokes in the air, as though slashing a man's cheeks
open. Whereat the other waiter took it back.

[¶14] The queerest type I ever saw in the hotel was an 'extra'. He had been
engaged at twenty-five francs for the day to replace the Magyar, who was
ill. He was a Serbian, a thick-set nimble fellow of about twenty-five,
speaking six languages, including English. He seemed to know all about
hotel work, and up till midday he worked like a slave. Then, as soon as
it had struck twelve, he turned sulky, shirked his work, stole wine, and
finally crowned all by loafing about openly with a pipe in his mouth.
Smoking, of course, was forbidden under severe penalties. The manager
himself heard of it and came down to interview the Serbian, fuming with
rage.

[¶15] 'What the devil do you mean by smoking here?' he cried.

[¶16] 'What the devil do you mean by having a face like that?' answered the
Serbian, calmly.

[¶17] I cannot convey the blasphemy of such a remark. The head cook, if a
_plongeur_ had spoken to him like that, would have thrown a saucepan of
hot soup in his face. The manager said instantly, 'You're sacked!' and
at two o'clock the Serbian was given his twenty-five francs and duly
sacked. Before he went out Boris asked him in Russian what game he was
playing. He said the Serbian answered:

[¶18] 'Look here, _mon vieux_, they've got to pay me a day's wages if I work
up to midday, haven't they? That's the law. And where's the sense of
working after I get my wages? So I'll tell you what I do. I go to a
hotel and get a job as an extra, and up to midday I work hard. Then, the
moment it's struck twelve, I start raising such hell that they've no
choice but to sack me. Neat, eh? Most days I'm sacked by half-past
twelve; today it was two o'clock; but I don't care, I've saved four
hours' work. The only trouble is, one can't do it at the same hotel
twice.'

[¶19] It appeared that he had played this game at half the hotels and
restaurants in Paris. It is probably quite an easy game to play during
the summer, though the hotels protect themselves against it as well as
they can by means of a black list.