Shisha on a CV?

boo hoo.
at the risk of continually repeating myself until you get it, it's a bad idea. by including it on your CV you're saying to employers that you deem it important and integral enough to who you are as a person and future employee that you felt it necessary to include in a job application. that's sending warning bells up in the minds of every employer who just wants a reliable, hardworking 20-something to man the tills or fetch stock from the back.

That's a much more considered, and much less childish, response. Thank you.

You realise there's a not tiny chance that recruiters might look at shisha in the same way? Doesn't matter how stupid of a view it is, it is definitely something they could still believe.

That's great, but literally every other job seeker out there is "keeping it simple" with the same thought process, so that's terrible advice for actually writing a CV that'll get a job. I'm putting it on there because it's the truth and for the reasons mentioned in my OP. I've included it as part of a line in the Interests section: "...and when not doing that, I enjoy going out with friends for shisha or a movie (preferably both)". I could put any of the others you mentioned instead, but none of them would be true.

god forbid you read the rest of my first post. i might have even seemed older than 12.
just saying that considering the typical age and economic background of chain store owners, it's pretty likely that your future employer would have similarly "middle-class" views to me. apologies that my informal manner of typing seemed childish to you, but then again, you are on a forum called the STUDENT room. how old did you expect me to be?

I'd say it depends where you're applying.

Fashion retail stores, think Primark/New Look/Diesel/Lush/Thomas Sabo, etc. in a large shopping centre (Meadowhall, specifically).

What does chain store owners have anything to do with it? Lol, you seem confused about the structure of retail. We're talking about large companies in a large shopping centre, where the person hiring you is a recruiter. And it's not the middle-classness that's usually the problem on TSR, it's being a middle-class kid with very little exposure to the world outside of school/college/uni, hence being so bewildered by something like shisha. A recruiter hiring people my age day-in day-out is likely not to share that trait.

lol i think you're overly confident about getting hired in teh first place m8

Most CV writing sites/guides/tutorials/advisers that I've gone through - and it's a lot at this point - suggest including an Interests/Hobbies section, and at the very least, there is no consensus that a CV should not contain that information. Not everything on a CV has to be relevant to the job at hand. This is nothing new, and these kind of baseless criticisms are exactly why I asked people to read the justifications in my OP and respond to those directly with convincing arguments.

Out of curiosity, what level are you applying for?

For part time jobs for school, hobbies can be on CV, but for graduate level jobs no way. From experience and talking to HR.

When you apply to a professional job, HR receive it and check for two things: that you meet the requirements (education) and that you have relevant experience. Your CV is nice and clear to show this, no "I'm a hard working person who does X" fluff to get in the way.

Only then your application is passed to the relevant specific department within the company who look at your app more personally with your cover letter and phone interviews when deciding between applicants.