Department to relax its policy on hiring foreign workers.

Mr. Hetzel has complained that Immigration is currently refusing to allow him to employ more ex-patriates.

"As a result, we're having to take on untrained Bermudians and we're having problems training them,'' he said.

He has been appalled at the quality of some supposedly experienced waiters and waitresses who have come to him looking for work at his restaurant/bar.

"I had a lady come to me last year who had been a captain at one of our larger hotels for years and she couldn't even lay a table,'' he said.

"That's a pretty sad state of affairs, in my opinion. It frightens me that there have been people like this serving our tourists.'' Other staff hired recently have been unreliable and not interested in their work, he said.

"One guy we were training turned up half-an-hour late one day and then never showed up at all,'' he said. "What sort of way is that to carry on? "He just wasn't interested in the job and had been wasting our time.'' MR Onions has been forced into running frequent training programmes to bring new staff up to the mark, he said.

But this was proving expensive and there was nothing to stop a person who had been fully trained from leaving and going to work elsewhere, said Mr. Hetzel.

"Immigration does not feel we're trying hard enough to take on people and train them,'' he said. "But it costs us a bomb to run all these training classes.'' Despite all the restaurant's staffing problems, the current batch of new employees, shown in our picture, were shaping up well, he said.

The winter closure of several hotels had not led to the expected stampede of people looking for temporary employment, said Mr. Hetzel.

"A lot of them take two months off and then go back to their hotel when it reopens,'' he said.

"They particularly don't want to work over the Christmas period and that has caused us problems.'' WAITING SCHOOL -- MR Onions owner Mr. Brian Hetzel (third from left) teaches the art of waiting to new staff.