The lamest jokes from the hospitality industry

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: the lamest jokes from the hospitality industry.

When I was fifteen, I stood for the first time with a tray in my hand and about five seconds later, I dropped a tray for the first time in my life. No, hospitality was not a field I mastered right away. I found it terrifying. It probably didn't help that my first hospitality job was in a restaurant owned by Herman den Blijker (how did I even get hired there?) and no one really expected that I could do absolutely nothing. Still, I managed to stick it out for three months and then swore I would never work in hospitality again.

I actually kept that promise for quite a long time: about two years, because when I turned eighteen, I gave it another chance. With obviously more success, because until I was 26, I worked in hospitality. The only thing I didn't learn in all those years was to believe people a little less quickly. I literally fell for everything (and by the way, I still do).

Fell for everything
All those silly hospitality jokes... Yes, go ahead. I was walking through the various neighborhood cafés again to ask if they perhaps had Irish coffee beans, because ours were out. Recognizable? These are the absolute silliest jokes that are made in the hospitality industry and yes, I have fallen for almost all of them.

1. ‘Can you ask the neighbors if they have Irish coffee beans?’ was the first one I fell for. All the surrounding cafés were in on the joke and sent me to the next one: ‘I think they have them!’ By the way, it also works with cappuccino beans.

2. ‘The corona glasses are out, can you ask next to us if they have a few?’ Same story, and again being sent to all the surrounding places. Luckily, I didn't fall for this one, but that was only because it wasn't asked of me, but the newer girl. Lucky me.

3. Letting new staff go look for the next drinks: bottles of Chateaubriand or a Chateau de Migraine. Even more awkward when they make you order those from the supplier.

4. Being sent to the supermarket because the yellow and/or green paprika powder is out. Of course, emphasize that it is really important that you don't come back empty-handed.

5. White cocoa powder for white hot chocolate. Very essential and actually impossible to find. Because it doesn't exist.

6. Whisk to whip the cream, because we lost that whisk. Very difficult to find kitchen utensils you've never heard of and which you (hopefully soon) find out don't exist at all.

7. Even I (and that says a lot) immediately caught this one: get tomorrow's newspaper at the store. And how sharp I felt, wow.

8. HA, this is a thing of the past, because it now exists: a keg of 0.0% beer. But back in the day, when malt beer was only available in bottles, many newcomers were sent out for such a keg...