On the first day of my new job as a hotel waitress — before I have a chance to polish a glass or proffer a canapé — I'm primed in detail about how to enter the building. Not via the front foyer, but circuitously through a 'secret staff entrance'.

It is imperative I memorise the route, I'm told by the briskly efficient restaurant manager, who steers me through it, via an obscure door by a KFC outlet in a low-rent shopping mall.

We then travel up two floors in a shabby service lift, past a phalanx of security men, through an underground delivery area, past bins, a staff canteen and along a harshly lit subterranean corridor that smells of urine.

Another staff lift disgorges us into the hotel kitchen, through two swing doors and finally into the light and bustle of its restaurant and gleaming lobby.