I have a friend who works for a major hotel chain. He works as a Hospitality Quality Consultant, sort of a secret shopper for hotel service. His job consists of going to different hotels around the world, staying in high-class suites, ordering drinks and other amenities, and generally enjoying everything the hotel has to offer. After his trip he writes up detailed reports for the hotel chain about things to fix, issues he came up against and good things about the hotel that should be used for marketing, etc.

He has lots of awesome stories, but one particular story jumps out at me.

He was once at a hotel in Hong Kong with some friends, he was on the job – testing out the hotel’s new bar. While enjoying himself with his friends, he noticed a group of Chinese businessmen ordering a very expensive bottle of scotch. He decided to order one for his group of friends as well. When the businessmen noticed that he has ordered the same bottle as them, they quickly returned it and ordered an even more expensive bottle. He noticed this and decided to play their game, ordering an even more expensive bottle. This went back and forth, each group one-upping the other back and forth throughout the night. After a while my friend decided to call it a night and started to leave the bar. On his way out, the businessmen, who were about 20-3o years older than him, followed him out. Just before he got in the elevator to go to his room, one of the businessmen stopped him and said, “Excuse me, but we have to ask…what do you do for a living?” Another piped up, “Yes, what do you do that you, a 20-something-year-old, can afford to one-up us all night?” A third one jumped in at this point and said, “We have been working to build our fortunes for the last 30 years!”

My friends reply really stuck with me.

He turned around and simply told them, “Actually, I work for the hotel. So, everything I ordered was on the house…I wasn’t paying for it! When you work for the boss, he takes care of the bill.” With that, he got in the elevator and headed up to the penthouse.

Rashi explains to us that when the Torah tells us, “Zachor et yom ha’Shabbat” it means that throughout the course of our week, when we come across a nice steak or a nice pair of shoes we should save them for Shabbat – remember Shabbat. The Gemurah in masechet Shabbat on 119b tells us that a person who really fulfills Shabbat becomes, “A partner with Hashem”.

What does this mean?

We are taught that everything comes with a price, even the physical and spiritual pleasures of this world come at a cost. Whatever enjoyment we get in this world will be “deducted” in some way from our merits in the next world. But we are also told to enjoy this world in its entirety, to not forgo a single bit of beauty that God placed in the world for us to enjoy…how do we rectify these two ideas?

This world is our hotel. It is the most magnificent hotel in the universe. If we are just customers, we need to work many years to deserve the pleasures of the world and we will have to pay “top dollar” for all of them when the bill comes. However, if we “work for the boss”, if we are “partners with Hashem” everything is on the house!

If we simply partner with Hashem and make sure that our focus in this world is serving Hashem and improving his world, all the beauty of this world is on the house!

When you work for the Boss, He takes care of the bill.