I Spent the first four months of 2024 washing dishes…

Hello dear reader, thank you for joining me again in this little archive of my life.

It’s been four months since I last wrote a blog post, and I haven’t been up to anything interesting or crazy since then that I felt was worth delving into. Nonetheless, I have still been living, still have ideas, and for some reason or another still come back to writing as a tool for processing and sharing experiences. 

Last week I drove down to Shenendoah, Virginia, listening to Mark Twain’s Autobiography. The first Volume out of three is 26 hours long, so I barely made a dent in the whole work. The reason it’s so large is because Twain dictated the entire work, sparing us no detail: he’d talk and weave his yarns to a captivated scribe, jumping from story to story wherever his mind led him, for some hours, day after day, for a full three years (1904-1907). 

In an earlier essay of his titled How to Tell a Story, he tells us how he sees his art: “The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular…The humorous story is strictly a work of art—high and delicate art—and only an artist can tell it.” It’s with this spirit I take to my blog. The wandering spirit (not the humorous, do not expect to find my writing funny or you will be disappointed I think).

Last summer I wandered physically, spending long days driving highways or hiking trails, and now I’ll wander with my thoughts from random events and stories to books or ideas to maybe related thoughts. This post is hopefully the first installment of many more to come. 

I cannot promise–or even hope–that you will learn anything of use or take anything significant away from this, only that you may be slightly entertained and at the very least engaged enough to be distracted for a few minutes. 

I spent every Monday and Tuesday of the first four months of this year washing dishes from around 3:30 to 11 at night in a bar/restaurant with a small, entirely from-scratch, kitchen.

Dishwashing is not easy work but it is not particularly complicated either. The dish-pit is tucked into a corner on the left side of the kitchen (coming in from the front of the restaurant) in a workspace totalling an 8 by 8 yard square. The right side of the square, still coming in from the front now, is made up of the 2 yard long by 1 yard deep stainless steel hip height table where the dishes are dropped off for washing and where the scrubbing is done, and a wall with a whiteboard facing out.

On the other side of the whiteboard wall is 3 story wire storage rack: spatulas, spoons, and hand-held tools are in two bins at the bottom; blenders and food processors are in the middle shelf; the stainless steel pans from ninth to half are in the center (if you’ve never worked in a restaurant, google “ninth pans” or “sixth pans”; these are what you see on the chipotle line storing the cold and hot ingredients), and the full hotel pans, sieves, and quart containers on the top with ladles hanging off the side. 

Now we are inside the pit, facing the front of the restaurant with the scrubbing station and storage (what I previously described as the right side of the square) directly on my left. There’s a one square yard sink with the removable metal holey cover right in front of me, where the dishes are loaded onto the trays. I have a high pressure spray gun attached to a flexy hose and a small red box filled with soapy water and a metal scrubby; these are what I use to wash the dishes before loading them onto trays and sliding them right into the dishwasher.

It is one of those single load washers with a 2 and a half minute cycle whose door opens sliding up, and whose cycle starts upon closing. For larger items like sheet trays and hotel pans, I have to carefully load them in through the front because they are too tall to be pushed in on the tray. The opening is barely large enough for the width of the pan and my two hands, and almost every day I scrape my water-softened knuckles on the sharp metal sides of the machine. One day I scraped my hand on literally the first dish I tried putting in that day. The smallest lapse of focus was punished here. 

I typically scrubbed and sprayed dishes totally clean before loading them in order to keep the rinsing liquid clean. Otherwise the water would have to be changed halfway through the shift–it takes about 3 or 4 minutes to drain and another 5 minutes to fill back up. 

The clean dishes then slide out on the right side on a counter space large enough for two trays to fit side by side. Then on the next side of the square is some counter space where the empty glass carafes are stored, and where I keep the stacks of plates and bowls after they’ve been air-dried or wiped with a towel.

Filling the rest of that wall is a three chamber sink which I used for soaking especially dirty pots and pans but never really for washing dishes. Directly behind me in the middle of the square is a 7 foot tall wire rack station on wheels for drying and storing with dishwasher-esque shelves. The bottom row is filled with pans, the second with sheet trays and cutting boards, the third with various fryer equipment, lids, and half sheet trays, and the top with plastic cambros. 

Upon arriving for my shift at 3:30 or 4 there’d be a stack of containers and dishes used for prep since 9 or 10 in the morning. It took me the first hour and a half or two to get through these, and I’d always leave the plastic quart and half-quart containers for last (about 20-30 of each of them), as they were a pain in the ass to spray off individually and they stacked well and didn’t take up too much workspace.

Over the course of a busy day I’d wash maybe three to five hundred plates and bowls, and half of that on a typically slow day. Stacked, sprayed, loaded, washed, dried, stacked, and carried around the corner, over and over again until we closed and I washed the fryer baskets and tools and cutting boards, swept, mopped, took out the trash, and left sweaty with wet and smelly pants (from spilling water on myself buddy, get it out your head) with a cigarette (blue Camel) hanging from my mouth. 

On especially slow days, after I caught up with all the morning dishes, I could take many long breaks as the plates and containers slowly trickled in. Sometimes I’d waif around outside smoking and chatting; or I’d waif around inside talking about music or art or food or participating in general tomfoolery like throwing fake grenades at the line cooks and hiding behind shelves yelling “Fuck you buddy” in an atrocious New York accent. When I’d get food I’d walk around and enjoy it sitting at the bar like a customer–one of the bartenders loved or tuesday “date nights” where I’d sit and chat. 

The kitchen music varies according to who’s on aux: hyper pop clubby house music, queer punk, Billy Joel and other pop/rock classics, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and other pop sing-alongs, heavy metal rock or trance, and sometimes medieval flute remixes of Eminem and Weezer. 

The kitchen has four staff: dishwasher, salad/prep, and two on the hotline. I was kinda behind a wall in my own corner of the kitchen–still in view of everyone (it’s a small space)–and it felt like I was in my little hole separated from the rest. Music wasn’t quite enough stimulation for me, and I could only really socialize on downtimes, so my brain would be free to wander and pounce and bite and jump as I sprayed down plate after plate twisting my body back and forth back and forth, hour and hour after hour.

So I started listening to Audiobooks: Big Sur, the Sun Also Rises, East of Eden, Frankenstein, The Shadow of the Wind, The Call of the Wild, The Pearl, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Gunslinger, Great Stories (a podcast narrating short stories), Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Atlas of the Heart, Awareness–I think that’s it…

The seven to eight hours of dedicated listening time twice a week was real effective, and the physical labor was tiring yet satisfying: a clean dish pit after a long night was a proud piece of work; and maybe it’ll sound lame but coming in and cleaning for 8 hours twice a week without missing a single day is the hardest thing I’ve done this year and an accomplishment in my book.

Dishes can be a fantastic teacher of discipline.

Whether you’d like to or not, as long as the dishes come in, you just gotta keep cleaning them. The more you hesitate the worse it becomes–shoving your hand down a clogged sink, furiously scraping black burned crud on the bottom of a pot, and individually washing 50 plastic containers could be procrastinated, but not without some consequences. It’s humbling too, doing the dirtiest and ugliest job in the kitchen, and always being the last to leave at the end of the night.

It’s not in my personality to complain, although sometimes I will sulk a little bit, which is what I did on nights I was especially tired and dissatisfied. 

The most important thing I learned is firstly to do everything in my power to make the life of the dishwasher easier: sort silverware, scrape off plates and organize them neatly, and don’t throw silverware in the bin so it splashes everywhere.

Secondly, while dishwashing, always move your feet! If you stand there all day with feet planted, and resort to twisting the torso back and forth you’ll wear down your obliques until you pull a muscle or nerve in your ribs–literally, this happened to a coworker's partner at another place. The full-time dishwasher uses a pivot foot to rotate back and forth saving his sides from abuse. Stretching during downtime too can be a magical way to rest, breath, and rejuvenate muscles and energy in the middle of a shift much more effectively than a smoke break. 

I don’t wash dishes anymore, and it is a relief. I wait tables, and now I can say I’ve worked every position in a restaurant except for salads and managing. My first training shift front of house I felt a strong sense of nostalgia for the kitchen–it felt like I was leaving a close friend for a time as I stared into the brightly hospital-esque lighting and sounds of chaos and clattering of the kitchen–and I felt a fondness for the dishwashing machine like I might feel towards an old yoga mat I’ve sweated and swore on for years before throwing out, or an exes bedroom I’m knowingly seeing for the last night.

I put in work and suffered and felt love and I am decidedly different for it. This wasn’t my first time washing dishes in a restaurant, but it was my first doing it on a consistent schedule. 

Keep dishwashers in your thoughts people, for they are quiet and humble and will not ask for praise (just a snack or two), and our restaurants and homes couldn’t run without them. 

Thanks for reading!
Until next time,

-Andy