During our hike in Portugal and Spain we had reserved hotels for most of the overnight stays. In a coastal town called Cee we spent the night at the Hotal Oca Insua Costa de Morte. Like any morning after staying at a hotel overnight we went for breakfast before resuming our journey. Nothing special to say about the breakfast at this particular hotel except that there was an interesting waiter. I usually seek out the chairs facing the restaurant to observe other guests and the ongoing business in the restaurant. So there he was a man in is upper twenties. Largely an average person, dressed in what appeared to be the required attire- a white Polo shirt and black pants. He was friendly and greeted us and other guests with a routine that included directions around the buffet that was spread out on multiple wall spaces in the vast dining hall. The hotel was not very busy and hence the breakfast area was likewise rather quiet. It appeared to be policy that all the tables had to be set up for breakfast with plates, cups and glasses for water or juice. There were many tables in that dining hall. Since all guests had to sign in with their room number it must have been apparent to the waiter that no more people were coming and judging by the noise the local folks appeared to be preferring the bar area for their morning coffee and pastries. So, the waiter started clearing the breakfast setups and replacing them with lunch setups, obviously following the same policy. Initially that did not appear to be anything special. After a while though it started becoming somewhat irritating because he kept moving around our table. Of course, once distracted I started paying even more attention. He would take the juice glasses and carry them to a storage place on the other side of the room, then he would return and take the plates on a similar journey to be followed by the silverware. But that was just one table! So, more was to follow and in reverse the lunch setups had to be assembled from different storage racks on different ends of the rather large room – with the same method of sequential trips. Since I was now tuned in, I could see that all operations followed the same schema – almost like a Perpetuum mobile – steady movement with a light load traversing the large room – back and forth, forth and back. I could not really make sense of the waiters’ method. First, I thought perhaps he needs to be occupied to not be assigned to another job or to fill the hours of his shift. Yet I did not see a supervisor who needed to be impressed with busyness. Clearly it appeared to be a method to pass the time. Our visit fell into the low season and one can only imagine and hope that in the summer month this efficiency reserve could be put to work with the same personnel against a hopefully full hotel!