3 ms·
I 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 fina
by thr0waway001 2y ago
I 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?
- netcoyote 2y agoI expect disposable gloves would have worked, but they weren't provided, and as a naive 17-year old I was way too dumb to ask. For reference on my stupidity, around the same time I mixed chlorine bleach and hydrogen peroxide to make a stronger cleaning agent and independently discovered that chlorine gas is really nasty stuff! Wow -- only did that once! It wasn't all bad. Several times I got to fill a 2'x2'x3' bin with strawberries after cutting off the bad bits, and ate several pounds of them each time. For non-Americans, that's around 40 kilos, but as an American I don't know much about the metric system, so that might be a few grams off :)
- redundantly 2y agoWater will just get in at the wrist and then the moisture is trapped in the glove, which could be worse.
- astura 2y agoWondering the same thing, I also wore gloves when I was on dishes in the cafeteria kitchen I worked at in high school.