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Iain Mackinnon

Iain Mackinnon

9 May 2011 | 17:42

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I’d certainly recommend Vietnam for a holiday – and it happens to be where I first saw a dead body, albeit a sanitised one, embalmed, and in an elaborate mausoleum. It was the remains of the country’s first president, Ho Chi Minh.
Ho’s mausoleum is in Hanoi, on the spot where he declared Vietnam’s independence from France in 1945. The Vietnamese pay him great respect as the father of modern Vietnam – strange to think he was formerly a kitchen porter in Ealing, just down the road from me.

I think Ho Chi Minh would approve of being known as a kitchen porter. After a couple of years doing basic kitchen jobs at sea, in Paris, and then in London, he took to politics full-time but remained a humble man personally when president. He made a point of living in the house that previously belonged to the estate electrician rather than in the mansion of the former French Governor-General.

Colleagues in the hospitality sector may be muttering by now that embalming would be too good for some of their kitchen porters – but you’ll appreciate that this one is a bit special. Not every kitchen porter will turn out to have such hidden talents, of course, and I don’t suppose for a moment that the small Ealing hotel that employed him could have made use of his political skill. But I wonder how much talent lies overlooked in basic grade staff?

When I was newly-launched on my career, a manager briefing me on his responsibilities used a powerful phrase which I’ve repeated many times since. He talked about those of his staff who used more skill driving to work than they did when they got there. That manager may not have been able to tap the talent of a kitchen porter interested in politics, but I’m sure he’d have seen the man’s potential and at least asked himself what else he might be capable of.

Iain Mackinnon
 
 

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