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A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)
- rendall 2y agohttps://archive.is/3kNwQ https://archive.is/3kNwQ
- HenryBemis 2y agoBack in the late 90s I was working in a nightclub in the UK. It was my first time when I had to use a 'professional' dishwasher. That thing could wash 50-70 glasses in 3-4 mins and I remember that when I was pulling out that tray it was hotter than the sun. We had 5-6 trays for each dishwasher of them and at any given time 1-2 trays were out filled with glasses cooling down. These were like tiny ovens (same horizontal dimensions but only 40-50cm tall) I haven't worked in a restaurant so I don't know about that complexity (cutlery, porcelain wearing out) but glasses.. oh man we had 99% mostly pint glasses (beer/UK) and shot glasses and 1% wine and champagne glasses, and considering people breaking them we had to restock (replace broken or replace worn out) every week.
- edu 2y agoThe article is about people, actual human beings washing the dishes by hand.
- ripe 2y agoYes, and yet... Guzman says he's a better chef for having cleaned pots and pans and worked his way up in the kitchen. “Cooking school doesn’t prepare you for a broken dishwasher,” he says.
- pfdietz 2y agoAt one point West Virginia had a very large glass industry, including production of drinking glasses for eastern cities. Sustained breakage ensured a large steady market. https://www.glassonline.com/usa-opinions-differ-on-decline-of-west-virginia-glass-industry/ https://www.glassonline.com/usa-opinions-differ-on-decline-o... "One hundred years ago, by one historian's estimate, the bars, hotels and restaurants of New York City broke 500,000 glass tumblers every day." (2003)
- wodenokoto 2y agoI’ve never worked at a place where we broke 1 glas a day on average, let alone 1 tumbler. That would put my estimate at over a million bars, hotels and restaurants in New York in 1903.
- ambicapter 2y agoYou could work at plenty of places that don't break 1 glass a day and the average could still be 1 glass/day.
- pfdietz 2y agoI'm guessing there must have been significant deliberate breakage.
- latchkey 2y agoRecently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41173177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41173177 East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses
- gryzzly 2y agobut unfortunately the speedy commercial ones aren’t removing the all the chemicals properly – https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/media/2022/Geschirrspuelmittel.html https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/media/2022/Geschirrspuel... another reason to eat at home.
- unwind 2y agoI think the article refers to the actual human(s) doing the work, not machines. Quite confusing, not sure if it's intentional or not.
- lijok 2y agoHumans use the machines
- gryzzly 2y agoInteresting, I was called a busboy when I was working in a restaurant washing the dishes, not a dishwasher. Never heard it be used for anything but the device.
- wodenokoto 2y agoNo, busboy clears tables and delivers it to the dishwasher, who cleans the items using a dishwasher.
- ElevenLathe 2y agoIn practice, at least in the US Midwest where my experience is, there is not always a clear line between the two jobs. I washed dishes as a busboy and bussed dishes as a dishwasher.
- wodenokoto 2y agoIt was a bit tongue in cheek. I've bussed, served dishes, pulled coffee, mixed cocktails and washed dishes as a waiter all in the same day.
- tennisflyi 2y agoThe "heart," but the only mention of pay is $10/hour, and advancement leads to more long nights as a chef in the volatile restaurant industry? Such respect Edit: also, the lip service of the title "porter" - the electric company will surely except that as payment
- lijok 2y agoThey get paid in lip service apparently. Just like all the essential workers during covid lockdowns.
- keiferski 2y agoNot that underpaid workers aren't an issue, but - in my experience working in kitchens, the owner / person controlling the funds is very rarely actually on the cooking team. And so the respect comes from other team members, not management.
- colechristensen 2y agoOh god, get owners out of the kitchen. Unless they're experienced chefs starting their own restaurants (I know some people like this, they're awesome!) owners are much better off away from the food as much as possible.
- keiferski 2y agoI agree, I just meant that there is something of a disconnect between "working hard and getting the respect of the team" and "being rewarded by management with more money/benefits/etc.", probably because the owners tend to not even be familiar with the workers. It's a different dynamic than a typical white-collar job where you're interacting with your manager (who can ultimately give you a raise) on a daily basis.
- whiteandmale 2y ago[dead]
- a1o 2y agoThe paywall of this website breaks chrome on iOS because you can't scroll down and then you can't get access back to either the address bar or the navigation controls. You get locked to it.
- mahoho 2y agoI worked part time as a dishwasher for around 6 years in middle/high school, at a restaurant with no machine, just three sinks and a huge counter. It's definitely a good way to get into the restaurant industry, but also a great way to learn if you hate working at a restaurant.
- neilv 2y agoRelated to the importance and underappreciated status of dishwashers... I only sometimes washed dishes at middle school. If you wanted the cafeteria "hot lunch", but your parents didn't pay for it, you could get it that day by volunteering to wash everyone's trays, in lieu of recess. Personally, I think this wasn't a great lesson. In the current very inequitable US environment, I support simply giving nutritious food to all kids, and choosing some other occasions to teach whatever other values. Also, it's possible to too readily "know your station in life", and endure things you really shouldn't, so I don't think kids should be conditioned to do that automatically.) And in restaurant kitchens, I've heard in many cases the rates paid for work are dragged down because undocumented workers don't have a lot of options, and so in some sense are exploited. Which seems especially class-oriented when they're working in a pricey restaurant, serving people who probably aren't working any harder than they are.
- jonhohle 2y agoYour last point is rarely discussed and incredibly unfortunate. We’re creating a lower class of citizen who must exist in the shadows, constantly fear being relocated, and can easily be exploited for labor or worse. Then somehow this is packaged as being humane in some way.
- romwell 2y ago...while being simultaneously vilified for "taking our jobs" and being "dangerous" (whereas they are being very deliberately used to generate profits). You are making a solid case to issue permanent residence permits to all undocumented workers (since our economy would, at this point, collapse without them), and - most importantly - punish employers with prison time for hiring people unauthorized to work going forward. That's it, illegal immigration problem solved. Employers like that are having their cake and eating it, too. The undocumented workers are the ones who get punished for their employer's crimes. Sorry, I'm not going to cite sources, as I've yet to hear about anyone going behind bars for hiring illegal immigrants. EDIT: never mind, here's a source[1]. It wasn't hard to find. >For example, the latest available data show that during the last twelve months (April 2018 - March 2019) only 11 individuals (and no companies) were prosecuted in just 7 cases. There were no prosecutions during either of the last two months. Corporate employers aren't even being prosecuted. This tells you everything about the hypocrisy of the entire system (and anti-immigration rhetoric in particular, whether legal or illegal). EDIT 2: "sporadically" hiring illegal workers isn't even a crime punished by prison [2]. Yay. [1] https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/559/ https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/559/ [2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1908-unlawful-employment-aliens-criminal-penalties https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
- hoseja 2y agoDishwasher as in computer or dishwasher as in computer?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoI wash dishes by hand as we've got a small kitchen, but one thing I've noticed is that dishwasher machines leave a unique taste/smell that can be noticed when drinking water from washed glasses. It's so much nicer to use a glass that's been hand-washed.
- Filligree 2y agoDishwashers are all designed not to 'waste water', so they don't end up fully rinsing the dishes.
- sumtechguy 2y agoAlso they need to be cleaned. Not all dishwashers are created equal. Some leave gunk behind on the bottom. It could be drainage and or poor design. Some have a built in garbage disposal and you have to clean the bin out every once and awhile. If you have never done it. It is not a fun task.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoWhen I hand wash glasses, dishes etc, I don't always fully rinse the items as I consider that the washing up liquid reduces surface tension and so should drain off the items quicker than just water. I can't say that I've ever noticed any flavour residue of the washing up liquid.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI think you should really fully rinse the items. Eating and drinking soap is no bueno for your epithelial linings.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoSurely this would depend on the detergent? Still, going to put this in my stack of lifestyle choices next to film photography and vinyl records
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- ripe 2y agoI know this article is about people who wash dishes (plongeur), but the machines are equally critical. A few days ago we were in line at the cafeteria in the IKEA in Stoughton, Mass., and they had paper cups and plates and bendy plastic forks because their dishwashers were "waiting for spare parts".
- jacknews 2y agoBeing a dishwasher “was the first time I went home proud of myself after a day's work.” I can relate, I spent a high-school summer dishwashing at a hotel, pretty much my first full-time job, and learned what hard work and long hours actually meant - 6:00 (breakfast) - 24:00 or sometimes later, albeit with breaks between serving times. Any reasonably-sized restaurant needs a dishwashing machine of some kind though, eg a conveyor - I don't see anything in those photos.
- celias 2y agoReminds me of Dishwasher Pete - Professional Dish-Washer Shares Tales From the Pit [2007] https://www.npr.org/2007/06/12/10991537/professional-dish-washer-shares-tales-from-the-pit https://www.npr.org/2007/06/12/10991537/professional-dish-wa... Dish Out Of Water https://www.thisamericanlife.org/74/conventions/act-two-17 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/74/conventions/act-two-17 Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States [book] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060896426?ie=UTF8&tag=thiamelif-20&linkCode=as2 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060896426?ie=UTF8&tag=thi...
- hackeraccount 2y agoI started work at a restaurant washing dishes. That's work. My main takeaways were learning that eggs are the worst thing in world to deal with and getting really annoyed with the servers who would put the water in the glasses in the trashcan. I mean who had to take out the trash and lift the the damn thing into the dumpster when it was filled with water? So annoying. That said it was fun job in it's own way, the variety of the people working there made the place a hoot.
- nehal3m 2y agoI was a dishy for years in a few different restaurants and hotels. It's hard work but if you do your best to help out the kitchen and wait staff wherever you can (picking up ingredients, helping mise en place, fetching dish carts yourself, stocking bar) then you can really make a difference in the day to day. Sometimes I miss the camaraderie. It's an easy industry to get stuck in though, and there's usually a lot of alcohol involved. It took me a while but eventually decided it's not for me.
- ginknocab 2y agoI got stuck a long time in restaurants from around 18 years old to right at 30. Finally got out and move to the construction industry. I'm just wondering what exactly Aguilar did in construction that's definitely harder than some high volume fast paced kitchens. Only thing I can come up with is most likely roofing, especially during the summer, because everything else I've been through in construction is easier. "I ask Aguilar: How does this compare to the construction work you did back home? 'It’s easy,' he says."
- mason55 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the construction business in Guatemala is a lot harder than in the US. Probably longer hours, no breaks, harder work, few to no worker protections.
- mdgrech23 2y agoman that is a super informative comment. I worked a shitty fast food job back in the day and I always felt like that was the hardest job I ever did. Literally just non stop work.
- akira2501 2y agoThe difference between construction and the kitchen is that if I mess up in the kitchen we're out probably less than $100. If I mess up in construction we're out significantly more in particular if it's a commercial construction job.
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- CalRobert 2y agoMy summer as a dishwasher made it clear tipping, already deeply stupid, is wildly unfair even to service workers. A lot of people helped you get your meal, but your dishwasher is definitely not tipped.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoI thought that tipping is mainly to enable the restaurant owner to avoid paying their workers properly.
- Gormo 2y agoNo, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you, even in the context of an organization managing the transaction. You tip people who are personally responding to your requests -- that's why the dishwasher and other people you're not directly interacting with don't usually get tipped.
- Larrikin 2y agoSo like the accountant filing your taxes, the person who fixes your bug in the bug report, the electrician adding power to a new room, the plumber fixing a leak?
- Gormo 2y agoNo. Most of those people are self-employed, so you are usually already paying 100% of the compensation directly to them in the first place. Tipping is for when someone is doing work directly for you, but as an employee of another party.
- johannes1234321 2y agoWhy is there a difference between somebody carrying a plate from the kitchen to my table and somebody preparing that plate just for me?
- iancmceachern 2y agoAn army marches on its stomach
- bluedino 2y agoA day in the life of a dishwasher in NYC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyHPuYpetbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyHPuYpetbg
- getpost 2y agoI had a summer job as a dishwasher, which paid minimum wage. I was required to join the union, so after union dues, I was paid less than the minimum wage! Being a union member provided no benefits whatsoever for temporary employees such as myself. This reminds me, the artist Gregory Blackstock retired with a union pension at 55 after 25 years' service as a dishwasher[0]. His art provided another source of income, but apparently he was swindled out of his estate. [0] https://www.historylink.org/File/22894 https://www.historylink.org/File/22894
- brnt 2y ago> Being a union member provided no benefits whatsoever for temporary employees In my union we very much care. What we do now is advocate for a reduction I the number of outsourced positions, and hire directly, so wage and conditions are improved. It's true unions optimise for certain things too (they also have limited sway and time), as I experienced as an expat. Especially when you know it's temporary, it's unlikely you'll ever see a personal benefit. OTOH, a union just managed to negotiate 10+% higher wages in my first year in current job, unbeknownst to me, so that's nice.
- bko 2y agoI think that the give-away that the union wasn't beneficial is that you were forced to join. If there is value add to parties, it would have to be voluntary. For instance, in financial industry, there is a certified financial analyst (CFA) designation that some choose to get. Employers normally pay those with a CFA higher wages and people sign up to get this certification and pay dues, all without anyone being forced. Mandatory unions seem bizarre to me, essentially just rent seeking.
- viccis 2y agoAll effective unions are mandatory. They represent the interests of the mass of workers there, and they wield that collective power against two groups who would be happy to take food out of their mouths if they could get away with it: their employer and new employees who need a job enough that they are willing to work for less money or worse conditions. So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a union has fought for without contributing to their continued push for better conditions, you are a parasite and their enemy, and they are justified in locking you out of that job via collective action. It seems like you don't really understand the meaning of "rent seeking". For something to be rent seeking, it must not provide any additional value. Unions do generally provide value, and in fact one of those values is a protection against actual "rent seeking" from employers, such as pay and benefit cuts (one of the easiest ways to earn more money with no extra value produced).
- jerlam 2y agoThis article came out in 2017, five years before the release of "The Bear", a currently hot TV show about fine dining. In this show one of the main characters polishes forks for an entire day and is rebuked for doing a bad job and not respecting the work. Previously this character offers to wash dishes and is told the restaurant has the best dishwashers in the business and can't afford to have someone like him screwing it up. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8XSIVhsE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8XSIVhsE4
- Forgeties79 2y agoArguably the best episode of the show. Way better than anything in season three that’s for sure lol
- khrbrt 2y agoThis as good a place as any to mention one of my favorite authors, Dishwasher Pete[0], who wrote a zine about dishwashing and dishwashers[1], and a memoir about his quest to wash dishes in all 50 states[2]. 0:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete 1:https://archive.org/details/dishwasher7 https://archive.org/details/dishwasher7 2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827458.Dishwasher https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827458.Dishwasher
- mattpallissard 2y ago"The dishwasher" is a great take of working as a dishwasher. It's from "the ice cream man and other short stores", you can read the whole section on Google books.
- 725686 2y agoThe True Story Of The Fake Dishwasher Pete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DqWRyote2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DqWRyote2Q
- e40 2y agoThat was such a wild story. Such a delight, on so many levels. Thanks for sharing this.
- e40 2y agoI have fond memories of checking out the local comic store in Berkeley, CA in the 90's, after lunch once a week, to see if the new Dishwasher was in. If it was, I knew I'd have a great time that evening reading his exploits and learning a lot of history. He'd often include a history lesson about local labor relations over the last century. Not always, but sometimes. I have all of them in a box somewhere. I, of course, also have his book on my shelf. IMO, Dishwasher Pete is a national treasure.
- samstave 2y agoWhen I was a teenager and I had just got heavily into martial arts - my Professor was teaching us about perception. (1992) One of the examples he used, was to ask us "Who is the most important people in a restaurant?" >"The dishwasher, and the Janitor" >>"Do you think you'll go to a restaurant again if its bathrooms are filthy and your dishes are dirty?" His point was that you have to look beyond whats in front of your face, and look at things as a whole, as a system, identify all the components, even if you cant seem them - you can see their impact on the situation.
- toastedwedge 2y agoI only worked a single restaurant for about 7 weeks. I'd leave with my ears ringing, everything outside sounded muffled at the end of the night. I understand the appeal some people see in the work (it is honest work after all), but I literally could not hear what people said in there. I just nodded and assumed it wasn't profane!
- thr0waway001 2y agoI worked as a dishwasher in the '90s at a fancy hotel for a couple years as a teen. I was in high school, was from a single parent household, my mom needed financial help, I had no skills, and had to learn the language (English). This particular kitchen though was enormous since it serviced 3 restaurants and a lounge. So the days were long and I had to work pretty much every major holiday and/or especial day. The worst was Mother's Day. It was brutal. Always a Sunday morning and unrelenting. It was a sweaty, tough, smelly, and undignified, at times, kind of job. The chemicals in the soap used by the machine were abrasive as hell. Burned your freaking fingertips over time. Only good thing about the job was lunch time. Having access to a lot of good food. But you never wanted to eat your meal around other people since everyone else thought you smelled and were put off by your sweaty appearance. Again, the job was not dignified, not in appearance anyway. And I don't care what label or euphemistic title employers come up with for the job. (e.g. dishie, dishy, etc) It still doesn't change the job. It does not make it dignified until they start paying more money and more and more people want to do it cause it pays more. Until then, job freaking sucks. A dishwasher by any other name would still have smelly, peeled and cracked hands.
- Danieru 2y agoWhy did you not wear gloves? When I did dishwashing at Mc Donald's I wore gloves they worked fine. Maybe my stint was shorter at only a year, but I'm pretty sure McDonalds is using plenty hard chemicals too.
- netcoyote 2y agoWhen I worked at Lyon’s Restaurant (a slightly upscale Denny’s, to my mind) as a dishwasher, the heavy-duty rubber gloves they provided were frequently wet enough inside that mold formed rapidly. Only put the awful things on once or twice before giving up on them because they were so unpleasant!
- ido 2y agoWould disposable gloves (like the kind you can get 100 for $5-10) not withstand the heat or chemicals?
- throwaway20222 2y agoI kept my dishwashing job on my resume for far too long under the title “hydro ceramics engineer.” It was grueling work, but I met a lot of interesting people, one in particular turned me on to studying Chinese which changed the whole path of my life. Also gave me entre into bussing then waitstaff. Paid my way through high school car insurance and college surviving. Definitely under appreciated and under paid, but I learned a ton about working for a living.
- surement 2y ago> Definitely under appreciated and under paid, but I learned a ton about working for a living. a lot of the discussion about wages ignores the value of experience; students pay to spend their days learning but it's somehow unfair for someone to get paid to learn job skills that transfer to other jobs
- Loudergood 2y agoExperience doesn't put food on the table today.
- surement 2y agoneither does education, what's your point?
- itronitron 2y agoSome may be interested in the movie 'Dish Dogs' from 2000, starring Sean Astin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Dogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Dogs
- aj7 2y agoI have a PhD in Physics from Berkeley. Still, in the strictest real estate sense, my best and highest use is as a dishwasher. I was managing a small optics factory in Livermore. We made laser mirrors to order there — any wavelength, any reflectivity, any angle, any polarization, you name it. I was working my ass off and was unmarried at the time. Thanksgiving came around and I had nowhere to go. But I hooked up with a church in San Jose that had a dinner for poor people and went as a volunteer. After serving the dinner, I wandered back into the dish room. I immediately went over to the sink and kicked out the lady who was pretending to work. I then washed all the dishes and left. Comes one year later. I’m in the exact same situation. I call up that church. The lady says, “Oh, that’s very nice of you. But we don’t need any more volunteers, we have enough.” Oh shit. What to do. I found my old replica army parka I had bought in a Cambridge surplus store 20 years earlier. I went as a poor person. I didn’t want to be alone. The first thing I found out is that poor people are herded, controlled, treated like children. We had to wait outside the church in the mild cold until permitted to enter, in a kind of line. So I sit down. I will never forget the beatific smiles of the volunteers that served us. This was performance art, and they were the stars. Everyone on the supplicant end noticed this, I’m sure. So the meal ends. I walk back into the dish room, survey the situation, once again kick out whoever was pretending to do the dishes, do the dishes, and leave.
- jackyinger 2y agoLoved reading this. I admire your courage and ingenuity to dress as a poor person. If you haven’t already read it you might enjoy Orwell’s autobiographical Down and Out in Paris and London, your story tangentially reminded me of it.
- dt_rsp 2y agoSimilarly, Jack London's /People of the Abyss/
- JPVincent 2y agoGreat book!
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
- jeffrallen 2y agoMy apprentice asked "If I see a typo in the training materials can I make a PR to fix it?" This is the IT version of dishwashing!
- eat_the_rich 2y agoStarting at the bottom and working your way up to the top definitely produces a different quality of leader. I used to work in research labs where everyone had to do a bit of everything. I'm currently in a silicon valley startup where leadership is quite proud and will enthusiastically tell anyone who will listen that they were born rich, their parents got them into Stanford, and they've only ever been c-suite. And they're incompetent as hell and I'm job hunting.
- sitkack 2y agoI have had the same experience working in Big Tech. Lots of people who have only had an internship (in their field) and no real life experience doing any sort of hard work. Of the friends that I gravitated towards in those big companies, only the folks that actually had real jobs, did we form any sort of long term connection. Not only do they have a tendency to incompetent, they can very unsympathetic and dismissive towards people viewed as below them.
- datavirtue 2y agoI was trained as a cook when I was sixteen at a world class Perkins restaurant. My trainer was a highly experienced chef and restauranteur. I had to master the dish tank first. Everyone did and everyone dished and cooked. I had to be able to run the dish tank by myself with the restaurant at full bedlam before I was able to progress as a line cook. We were doing $40-50k a week in the early 1990s. I love doing dishes to this day.
- krunck 2y ago"A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant"... so can putting items with non-trivial amounts of raw egg on them in the dishwasher.
- Animats 2y agoThe robotic version: Nala Spotless: [1] It's a service - $3000/month includes hardware and support. [1] https://nalarobotics.com/spotless.html https://nalarobotics.com/spotless.html
- mlinhares 2y ago3k a month plus what you have to pay to have someone babysit and feed it. this is wild.
- 93po 2y agoI think in a very high cost of living country (Switzerland) this would be good economics if you trained your staff to put stuff in front of it as part of its workflow. I think this would work best if the robot was typically had an empty queue and you could just clear a table and place it directly in front of the robot and walk away. There's lots of brief moments of downtime in a restaurant to do stuff like shuffle a tray or two over for the robot.
- Animats 2y agoThis is just the first version of the technology. It could get much cheaper if manufactured in volume, and it can get faster as well. Rule of thumb is that 10x the volume cuts the price by half.
- Iulioh 2y agoI don't really think that this is really possible. Robots like this are pretty common in the industry (like the mechanical industry) and one costs around 50k and we already produce them at scale. How much can they lease it for, in your opinion?
- Animats 2y agoCobot prices are dropping. This article claims $20K for a mid-range unit.[1] Nala shows two robots, one at the dirty end and one at the clean end of the dishwasher. Dishwashing is a good opportunity for robots. There are many potential customers for a relatively standardized product. It's much easier than automated cooking. There are other dishwashing robots. Useful for cafeterias, maybe.[2] Cute, but not too useful.[3] So far, none seem to be deployed much. But that will come. [1] https://standardbots.com/blog/collaborative-robot-prices-the-ultimate-guide https://standardbots.com/blog/collaborative-robot-prices-the... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGP-OjkgggU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGP-OjkgggU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoMuS6HPHxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoMuS6HPHxI
- harmmonica 2y agoCan't resist sharing my own experience as a dishwasher though given the number of comments no one's going to read this... I was a dishwasher (and everything else) at your standard suburban Italian deli for a couple years in high school. Italian delis are famous for their cold deli sandwiches, but also for things like bacon, egg and cheeses for the breakfast crowd, and chicken cutlet, chicken parm, sausage and pepper, meatball, etc. sandwiches for lunch. And the great thing about it is that these things, historically anyway, are cooked on-site, starting first thing in the morning, using your standard baking sheets/pots/pans, which (surprise) creates a lot of dishes each day. Now this deli I worked at had no machine so all those pots and pans stack up and by afternoon, when the cooking is done, there's a huge stack of dirty dishes. My first day working there, I show up after school and since they know I'm coming there's the huge stack of dishes waiting for me, the new guy. They tell me to get cracking on it and so I don the apron and get going. This is maybe at 2pm. As I'm working away, folks periodically check in with me, kind of with these quizzical looks, but they don't really say anything other than an "all good?" type of vibe. And I'm sweating my ass off because the amount of char/build up on these stainless steel pans/pots/etc. is off the charts. But I'm diligently working away getting them absolutely friggin' spotless! Like restoring them back to their brand-new state. Well, you see where this is going. The guy who got me the job, a friend who's also a high school guy but a bit older, comes in the back, as I'm finishing up, maybe 4 or 5 hours later. The two owners of the deli also come around the corner. My friend's like "dude, those have never looked like that," pointing at the huge stack of cleaned pots and pans. And I'm like "whattaya mean?" And he's like "all of that black stuff? Just stays on there!" I'd literally cleaned off years of charring that had built up. He slaps me on the back, starts laughing his ass off. One of the two owners, when he stopped laughing, was like "I didn't know why the hell it was taking you so long but... they look great!"
- triyambakam 2y agoThanks for sharing that
- l3w3 2y agoI've searched 'Orwell' on this page with no results. Feel like someone should mention the first half of Down and Out in Paris and London. His first book about life as a 'plongeur' in twenties Paris is very memorable.
- wholinator2 2y agoThe comment just above yours for me is exactly this. A recommendation to read Orwell's Down and Out. Posted seemingly 1 minute before this post. Probablt not important but i thought it was interesting
- Flop7331 2y agoI saw that too. Same thought at the same time. They should date.
- ge96 2y agoI was a dishwasher to six-figs remote eng. One thing I hated was power spraying ramekins and the sauce would hit you in the face... But yeah I remember those days listening to changelog while I washed plates.
- mlindner 2y agoI read the title and I assumed it was talking about a dishwashing machine. Why hand wash dishes? Just let the machine do the job.
- dataviz1000 2y agoI'm a little late to conversation. As a chef for 17 years, here is the advice I was given when I asked someone at age 16 what I should do to become a chef. He said I should get a job as a dishwasher. His reasoning is I needed to learn to appreciate and respect the restaurant's dishwasher because, in his words, 'when shit hits the fan and everything goes wrong, it is the dishwasher who will save your ass.' At 17, I walked into one of the best restaurants in the California and told them I was looking for a job as a dishwasher and why. I was very lucky because it lead to working in the best restaurants in the world. It took another 5 years, age 22, before I learned the power of telling an employee out loud I can't succeed without them. They didn't even want a raise, they only wanted me to say those words.
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- edgarvaldes 2y ago>when shit hits the fan and everything goes wrong, it is the dishwasher who will save your ass I'm 100% sure I have already read this exact phrase before.
- dataviz1000 2y agoI'm paraphrasing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35276251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35276251
- mschuster91 2y ago> and a week’s paid vacation after a year of service Meanwhile in Europe, four weeks guaranteed by EU law, and many states go above that, and many companies top that off. Oh and a truckload of public holidays on top. Working at the corner hours of the day, in a backbreaking job, for 20k a year and just one week of vacation? JFC.
- praptak 2y agoA related story ("WHEN IN THE HISTORY OF THIS RESTAURANT HAS ANYONE EATEN FROM THE BOTTOM OF THESE PLATES?"): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130313143038-5434591-best-advice-what-i-learned-from-a-sex-crazed-short-order-cook/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130313143038-5434591-best-a...
- triyambakam 2y agoWhat a great read!
- bradknowles 2y agoFunny. My family moved in the summer between 5th and 6th grade. But they didn’t have enough money to pay for my school lunches — my dad was a poorly paid teacher at the local University, and I don’t remember what poorly paid work my mom had. But I discovered that they allowed students to work as dishwashers, and if you did that, then you got your lunch for free — and even allowed to get seconds. That also kept me off the playground, where I tended to get bullied a lot. So, for me, that was actually a good experience in grade school. Sure, I had to deal with the super hot water and the super high pressure sprayer, but that didn’t take long. And I could quickly and efficiently load the trays into the commercial grade steamer that sanitized everything. I felt good about doing that job well, and I felt like I got a good reward for it. Thinking back, I don’t know why they allowed a 6th grader to work as a dishwasher. That was probably illegal according to the child labor laws. But I think it worked well for me.
- yurishimo 2y agoI think as a society we've come quite far, but if a kid wants to wash some dishes at school under adult supervision for a limited amount of time, I don't see a lot wrong with it. Obviously, it would be better if we could just not make families pay for school lunches, but that's another topic that isn't terribly relevant to this discussion. Do you think you learned any valuable lessons that carried into adulthood? I started working in 9th grade as a busboy/washer and look fondly back on those memories; not only as a way of getting out of the house (bad family situation) but also as a look into the lives of the adults that worked there. As an adult now, I feel sorry for the middle age people who worked there because they obviously didn't really want to be there, but they needed a job and frying eggs as the local greasy spoon was apparently what was available. But I'm happy now and I get a small amount of comfort knowing that I can go back to that line of work if I ever found myself in a bind and needed to make an extra $2k. I'm sure my adult body won't handle it as well, but mentally, I think I'd be prepared.
- bradknowles 2y agoAt least where we were, you needed a special permit to work if you were under 18, and at the time that would allow kids as young as 14 into the workforce. But, they could only work part-time. I did that later during the summer between my sophomore and junior high school years, to buy a car from my parents. But as a dishwasher in 6th grade, I didn’t have any adult supervision. I worked alone in there. And I don’t think that kids 16 or under should be working without supervision. And I didn’t have a youth work permit, which was most likely illegal. I don’t know that I learned a great deal as a dishwasher that would be useful in the adult workplace, other than how to efficiently and quickly load a dishwasher. I guess if I had to go back to that kind of work, I could do it again. Ironically, the car I bought from my parents was a 1974 Chevy Malibu Classic with a 350ci V8 engine, and if I had been inclined to do street racing, that would have been a perfect car to use for that. But I was a straight arrow and I had no flipping idea what I had in my hands, so I just drove it calmly (well, mostly calmly) to and from school and nothing else. A couple years later, when I was in college, I wasn’t driving it at all, because there was no reasonable parking on campus, and was effectively forced to take the campus bus. So, I ended up letting the car rot, and we ended up paying a towing company $50 to get it out of the driveway and haul it off for scrap.
- roshankhan28 2y agoI dont feel like a dishwasher can wash and make sure the dishes are perfectly clean. at least i havent seen one perform that well. a human can at the end see if it is cleaned or not in the first attempt. then they can clean it properly. machine cant do it
- P_I_Staker 2y agoOn the other hand you could argument that a dishwasher ain't worth all that much. You can basically toss them back out on the street and grab the next yokol and the operation contiues just fine. Chef and waiter? Not so much.