Former assistant manager in a mid range hotel, now working as a food and beverages manager in a restaurant.

"I packed it in because of the unsocial hours. You're not compensated for those." Mary (not her real name) left her job as an assistant hotel manager because of the long hours, split shifts and poor pay.

"I worked in a medium sized hotel . . . on the floor, covering all areas, mostly split shifts. I might start at 7 a.m. and finish at 3 p.m. and be back at work at 6 p.m. If there was a function on, I'd work through until closing. It was a hard graft." She had one day off a week and every second weekend off, but this meant that she had to cover for all of Sunday the weekends she was on.

"The advantages were the accommodation and the meals but, if you live in, you can be haunted. There's no 40 hour week. You'd work a minimum of 60 hours plus. When everybody else is off you'd be working . . .

every bank holiday weekend. You had to take your holidays before May and after October as the hotel couldn't afford to let you go during peak hours. The ideal would be to get a job with a large chain of hotels where jobs are more specialised and they have banqueting managers and so on.

"I left my job as assistant manager to take up a job as food and beverages manager elsewhere. It was five days a week, 9 a.m. to 6p.m." Former chambermaid, now working behind the bar: "It was just not worthwhile. The pay was really bad - £2 an hour. It was really hard work and some of the rooms were undescribable... You might get perfectly OK rooms for a month and then there'd be one room... absolutely horrible." On a typical day, she would get a list of about 15 bedrooms. Some of these would be departures and others were guests that were staying on. "If it was a departure, you'd take the sheets off, empty the mess in the room, vacuum and wait for new sheets to make up the bed. It was hard work for very little pay." If the guests were staying on, she just had to tidy up and change the towels but she was only paid for the hours she worked so a shift could be longer or shorter depending on the number of departures. A shift might be four or five hours long so she earned between £8 and £10 a day.

She now works part time behind the bar in the same hotel. She is paid £25 for working from 10.30 p.m. to 2.30 a.m. "I serve behind the bar and clean up afterwards. As to tips - it's usually people who forget to take their change rather than deliberate tipping. There are occasional tips from people staying in the hotel rather than the regulars.