Roman is taken inside to serve as a busboy and is roomed with the diminutive Fryc (Skamene), also a young man from the country, who very quickly introduces him to the hierarchy and rules among the hotel's kitchen staff.
One day Fryc is offered a shot at joining the waiting staff on the condition that he trains someone to replace him tending the bar.
Roman's initial exuberance rapidly dissipates as finds himself constantly hounded by the hotel's upper-class clientele, who turn out to be very demanding, often insulting, and extremely unsympathetic.
Roman is also regularly persecuted by the head waiter, Fornalski (Wilhelmi), the mustachioed middle-aged man encountered at the beginning of the film.
Fryc paints a bucolic picture of the inn as surrounded by livestock, wild game, and well-stocked trout ponds.
The mutual joy they derive from badmouthing the hotel and its rules proves fleeting, however, and the two former roommates part on bad terms, with Fryc telling Roman to fuck off.
Roman works out that Fornalski is the embezzler wanted by Pancer, but keeps this information to himself, to the horror of the more worldly Henek, who says she would have blackmailed the older man.