I
try not to dwell on the awful, moronic things I've done, but some
blunders stick out farther than a gym class stiffy, and it becomes
impossible not to brag about my failings.
Have you ever heard of Bonanza Steakhouse? It's a small chain of decent all-you-can-eat buffets where obese customers' loud crunching drowns out the quiet sobs of the backroom employees.
Have you ever heard of Bonanza Steakhouse? It's a small chain of decent all-you-can-eat buffets where obese customers' loud crunching drowns out the quiet sobs of the backroom employees.
It's
a decent restaurant the same way “Friday” is a decent song. . .
For
me, a high school junior at the time, and as a first job, it wasn't
so bad, I suppose. When I walked in for my first day of training, a
very pleasant young man named Tyler directed me to my post: the
farthest room back, out of view of patrons, so when you had a mental
episode, no one would know. I would be washing dishes.
The
position was pretty straightforward: dump excess foodstuffs into
large trash receptacles and place the dishes onto a dully-colored
plastic rack, which would then be shoved through the dishwashing
machine.
The
equipment I used sounds like a little piece of heaven for 1950s
housewives, even more so than the creation of soap operas. Clean
dishes in eight seconds? WOW, sign me up for that!
This
miracle of hygiene science isn't as fantastic as it sounds. It has
one speed, so when church lets out for the day, you'd better believe
every single person within ten miles is rushing to eat six plates of
food each, desperately determined to clog the machine with an
overflow of dishware. And the machine, for all intents and
purposes, implodes when it is rushed, which is exactly what is
happening at this point in the day.
And
of course certain foods stick
to the plates, even after being run through the washer three
freaking times. Nacho cheese
quickly became the bane of my existence, and now, every time I visit
a buffet, I smear it all over plates, just so the dishwasher gets a
little taste of my pain. It makes me feel better the same way
rubbing melted chocolate all over your chest does: it's unbelievably
euphoric for about three seconds, then extremely unpleasant for
reasons you can't quite describe.
Dishwashing
was an awful job, but that's exactly it: it was a job. I
put in my time and worked all the agonizing 9-hour no-break shifts
they'd give me all while desperately awaiting a better career option.
It didn't come for a grueling six weeks. And yes, I'm giving you
permission to joke about how incredibly short my tenure at that
horrid establishment was.
Oh,
right. I forgot to tell you how this splendiferous machine works.
Imagine the hottest place possible (you're probably imagining
spooning Miranda Kerr), and multiply it by any nameable number. If
that number were a temperature, it would be nowhere close to the heat
of the water that surged through this machine's hateful core.
One
of the few things I learned on the first day of the job was the
temperature range the water needed to be to properly clean the
dishes.
“Mm, I usually keep it between 150 and 180 degrees, but 160 seems to be the best,” Tyler told me, ever-so-pleasantly. Never had I heard such an awful punishment stated so cheerfully. I heard what he said and rationalized it in my mind: “The hottest temperature ever recorded was 134 degrees, so 150 isn't that much more.”
Dozens of people who weren't able to find proper shelter freaking died from “only 134 degrees”. People complain they're hot when it's 90 out, so how could I possibly have thought that 150 would be okay to the touch? It WASN'T. Nothing about this was okay.
“Mm, I usually keep it between 150 and 180 degrees, but 160 seems to be the best,” Tyler told me, ever-so-pleasantly. Never had I heard such an awful punishment stated so cheerfully. I heard what he said and rationalized it in my mind: “The hottest temperature ever recorded was 134 degrees, so 150 isn't that much more.”
Dozens of people who weren't able to find proper shelter freaking died from “only 134 degrees”. People complain they're hot when it's 90 out, so how could I possibly have thought that 150 would be okay to the touch? It WASN'T. Nothing about this was okay.
“Just
let the dishes cool off once they've been cleaned.” -literally
everyone I've ever
told this to
I
loved weekday evenings and Saturdays, because hardly anyone came to
the restaurant, so I was able to let the dishes cool off in the open
air. Then there were Sundays. . . there was absolutely no waiting
between the dishes coming out of the machine and doling them out to
the drooling ape-customers. It was kind of like an emergency room:
angry people constantly demanding something without enough help to
aide them properly.
Point
is, it is never an acceptable idea to touch fire, but for hours at a
time I was forced to stick my fingers into a malevolent
semi-sentience. Nothing about it should have been legal: the pay
was minimal, the hours sucked, I never
had help and it caused me quite a bit of physical and mental damage.
(The other employees thought I was legitimately retarded, too, so
that's fun.) So would you like to know what I did get out of this
torturous experience?
I
lost my fingerprints. They were completely burned off for more than
eight weeks after I quit the job.
Yeah,
pretty much. . .
Epilogue. . .
The
restaurant burned to the ground about two years after I'd quit, and I
wouldn't be totally surprised if it was the blisteringly hot
monster/dishwasher that caused that restaurant's downfall. Or a
disgruntled dishwasher, attempting to avenge his murdered
fingerprints. Just. Like. Me.
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