Upon my arrival in Dover, New Hampshire, I hit the sidewalks looking for a trusty “Dishwasher Wanted” sign. The outing in the charming, old town was pleasant. Up and down Central Avenue and past the old nineteenth-century mills that stood waiting to someday be turned into condos or offices, I surveyed every place that dirtied dishes commercially. But everywhere I ventured, no dishwashers were wanted.
The next day, I covered the town again by foot. Again, no luck.
Repeating my stroll every day seemed an inefficient way to keep vigil for a dishman’s departure. It was entirely possible that in the twenty-two-odd hours between searches, a sign could go up and another dish dog could easily snatch up the gig before I ambled by. If only I could somehow get to the restaurant owners before they even flew The Sign in the window. To let employers know that a new, available Dish Master was on the scene, I needed a direct line—a hotline!
So I wrote up a little flyer:
Has your dishwasher recently walked out on you?
In need of an experienced dishman?
Then call Pete
A DISHWASHER FOR ALL YOUR NEEDS
(Flexible hours/flexible pay)
On it, I listed K. J.’s phone number. In the town’s restaurants, cafés and coffee shops I passed out the flyers. Most personnel accepted and read the sheet without comment.
“Is this your resume?” one woman asked.
“Yeah,” I told her, somewhat flattered. “I guess so.”
At the Fish Shanty—a seafood joint—I handed a flyer through the back door to an old man.
“You a dishwasher?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Aw right. Come in Friday night and I’ll put you to work.”
Friday night—in state #7—my new stint began as they always did: I remained silent. In any new work environment, I didn’t know who was who. I didn’t know who obeyed the rules and who broke them; who snitched on late coworkers and who covered for them; who kissed the boss’s ass and who’d like to kick it.
I never showed my hand first. Usually I stayed clammed up until someone like Sonny revealed himself and cued me in. But here, my poker-faced routine got me nowhere.
“You’re the quietest dishwasher I ever heard!” one waitress told me.
I wanted to tell her that she should’ve said, “You’re the quietest dishwasher I never heard.”
But I was too wary to even say that.
My coworkers were a tight-knit group. They all seemed to be related to each other. And as the foreigner in town, I remained the outsider in the restaurant, washing dishes in silence.
Most of my interaction at the restaurant was limited to the patriarch, the old man who paid me every week in a bizarre ritual. I’d stop by the restaurant during the afternoon lull. The old-timer would go to the register, count out some cash and then motion me to follow him into the corner of the dining room. He’d glance over his shoulder and scan the empty restaurant to make sure we weren’t being watched. Satisfied that the scene was secure, he’d grab my hand, jam a clump of fives and ones into it and then force my fingers to make a fist around the dough.
Now convinced we were doing something that demanded utmost secrecy, I’d move my fist ever so slyly toward my pocket. It was usually when my hand was busy pushing the wad deep into my pocket that I’d remember to watch out for how he expressed his appreciation.
“Good work,” he’d say and then send his hand to deliver a good-natured old-Italian-guy slap on my cheek. But he never did it right. Body parts that should’ve had no starring role in a good-natured slap—the side of his hand or his wrist—would box my ear or bang my temple.
In a daze, I’d wonder, Should I sock him back?
But because he smiled while delivering the blow, I had to give him a pass for being a clumsy old man.
We repeated this routine for several weeks until finally, one time, as he went to pay me, he asked, “How much do I pay you? Four-fifty an hour? Uh, no, I mean four-twenty-five an hour?”
His performance as an old-seafood-joint owner was usually worthy of an Oscar. But this lame attempt at ad-libbing was a stain on his career.
“It’s five bucks an hour,” I corrected him.
“Really?” he said. Then he grumbled while stuffing my hand with the correct amount. His own poor acting seemed to have thrown him off so much that he missed his cue to deliver his customary “good work” clap to my head.
One warm autumn afternoon, I sat in the sun on the front steps and enjoyed a couple beers before my next scheduled shift. As the hour grew later, I grew more and more reluctant to kill my buzz by trudging off to work.
If I walked over there right now, I thought, I could still be on time.
Ten minutes and another beer later, I thought, If I left right now, I’d only be ten minutes late.
Another twenty minutes passed and I thought, Leave now and I’m a half hour late.
After one more beer, I ceased thinking about being late—or even about leaving for work at all.
There were heaps of ways to flee a job. Some of them, like in the film Scarface, were dramatic. When the lead character, Tony Montana, starts to walk away from the restaurant where he’s been dishing in Little Havana, the restaurant owner calls out to him, “Hey, wha’chu doin’? There’s a lotta dishes to be washed!”
“Wash ’em yourself, man,” Tony tells him. “I retire!”
Then Tony throws his apron at the boss.
That was one way to get an employer’s attention. But for me, on this night, I remained immobile. I assumed the old man would assume my absence meant that I’d retired from the restaurant—since that’s what I assumed.
Now freed from what little responsibility I had in the world, there was a familiar rush, the one that I could only get by quitting a job. I relished it with another beer.
Later that night, I talked to my dad on the phone. Learning that I’d gleefully dropped another job, he got upset. After almost thirty years at the same job, he was now enjoying his much-deserved and long-overdue retirement. He believed that days of leisure should be preceded by decades of drudgery, and he said so.
When I tried to explain to him that the best part of working was quitting, he told me about how he’d announced his retirement. For weeks, he’d secretly cleaned out his desk, taking home personal belongings so that on the day the notion struck, he could up and leave with minimal fuss.
Then one morning, he began clearing off the top of his desk. When his coworkers asked what he was doing, he told them he was going home.
The boss came over and asked, “You mean you’re leaving at the end of the day?”
“No,” my dad said.
“You’re going home at lunch?”
“No, I’m leaving right now.”
The boss asked him to stick around so the company could throw him a retirement party. My dad didn’t want a party. He just wanted to go.
And then he did.
“Really?” I asked him when he was done telling me the story. “You did that?”
As his son, I couldn’t have been prouder.
“You know that feeling you had when you left—that feeling of freedom?” I asked. “Well, I love that feeling so much, that’s why I’m always finding new jobs—so I can quit them!”
He laughed—and I hoped he understood.
After my farewell to the Fish Shanty, a call came from a restaurant where I’d left a flyer.
The woman—who introduced herself as the chef—asked, “Can you come in for an interview this afternoon?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
Cool, I thought, a new job to quit! But wait, what was that about an interview? Surely it had to be a mere formality. She’d ask if I want the job, I’d say yeah and we’d both be happy.
When I met the chef at the restaurant, the contrast in our appearances was uncomfortably clear. Her face was caked with makeup; she had her hair done up and she was dressed in spotless kitchen whites. Meanwhile, I was unshaven, had ratty hair and wore clothes that had almost as much hole to them as fabric.
But like a couple on a doomed blind date, we went through the motions anyway.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Well, I’m a dishwasher—” I began. Then I hit a snag. What else was there to say?
“—and I can start right now,” I added.
“And where do you see yourself in five years?” she asked.
“Five years?” I pondered. “Washing dishes, I suppose.”
“Where will that be?”
“Wherever there’s dirty dishes,” I said smugly, tickled with my slam dunk answer.
But it didn’t halt her persistent questioning. The inquisition soon revealed that she was more interested in a careerist for whom dishwashing was but a first rung up the job ladder. She wanted someone who wanted to be a cook someday. In short, she wanted a dishwasher who didn’t really want to wash dishes.
It made no sense. If her house had been on fire and someone arrived in fireman’s gear raring to put it out, she wouldn’t have stopped and asked him where he saw himself in five years. She’d get the hell out of the way and let the pro do his job. I figured the same should go for dishwashing. She had dirty dishes and here I was. So what if I was disheveled, in raggedy clothes and had a stink that preceded my arrival in the room?
When she was finally done with the interrogation, I asked, “So, I’ve got the job?”
“I still need to talk to a few other candidates, first,” she replied.
Candidates? I was looking for dish work, not the presidency.
Well, if there had been an election, apparently I’d failed to win her vote. After I left the restaurant, I never heard from her again.
With no jobs in town, I broke down and hopped across the border to dish at a waterfront lobster house in Kittery, Maine (#8). I borrowed K. J.’s car for the ten-mile/twenty-five-minute trip to work. Even though the drive time was shorter than my stroll-across-town commute to the Fish Shanty had been, it was exhausting to travel so far to dish. So after making the trek just three times, I returned just once more—to pick up my pay.
A few days later, K. J. and I were eating at a local hole-in-the-wall diner so cramped it was remarkable it was able to hold the dozen small tables and four counter stools that it did. The diner had been the first to receive my flyer since it seemed like a decent place to dish. It was cozy and oozed character. Plus, K. J. had convinced me to suspend my ban on eating out by claiming this place served portions huge enough that the leftovers were a full meal in themselves.
On this particular day, something about the diner’s dish dog struck me as odd. In her late twenties, overweight and clad in sweats, she looked more like a babysitter or a Dairy Queen cashier than a pearl diver. It wasn’t merely because she was female—I knew plenty of great dishgals. But there was definitely something off about her. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
While I was trying to decipher her, the dishgal suddenly stomped out of the kitchen, her face flush.
“Wench!” she yelled at a waitress. She pulled off her apron, threw it down and charged out of the packed diner.
Whoa! What panache! What timing! How could I have ever doubted her qualifications!
She was a magnificent dishwashing specimen!
Grinning, I sat admiring and appreciating the scene I’d just witnessed. Ditching the place during the morning rush, leaving a diner full of stunned customers and soiled dishes in her wake. That’d show ’em!
And wench? Who called anyone a wench?
She was awesome!
Then it hit me: The show had to go on.
Before anyone even had the chance to call out, “Is there a dishwasher in the house?!” I stood and crossed the diner. Right inside the kitchen doorway, the boss-guy was hunched over the sinks, already busy with the dishes. I could’ve kept my mouth shut and watched him sweat it out. But my need for work outweighed my need to see him suffer.
“I’m a dishwasher,” I told him.
He looked perplexed.
“You…want to work?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How do you know we need a dishwasher?”
“I just saw what happened,” I said, pointing in the direction of the front door where the Dish Mistress was last seen.
“And you say you’re a dishwasher?”
“For Christ’s sake, Alex!” yelled one of the two cooks who were frantically manning the stoves. “Just hire the guy!”
“Okay,” the startled boss said. “Job’s yours.”
He handed me an apron. In less than four minutes, I went from customer stuffing my face to employee busting the suds.
Diving right in with the dishes was no problem. Following the lead of the two cooks—Danny and Ricky—was more challenging. They moved so swiftly, and we shared such a small dance floor, that I kept bumping into them. But, little by little, I learned all their steps and got into the swing of the place.
But then an order came in and Danny called it out to Ricky. Danny repeatedly shouted, “Waffle! Waffle!” until Ricky turned to me and said, “Dishwasher, you gotta make the waffle.”
“I don’t know how to make waffles,” I said, playing my ignorance card.
Ricky pointed to the waffle-maker next to my sinks.
“Just pour the batter in and close the lid,” he said.
Since he wouldn’t take my word for it, I had to prove it to him. For the next few hours, each time a call went out for a waffle, I’d pour the batter in and close the lid. Sometimes I’d open the lid too early and serve up the waffles gooey, or I’d open it too late and make sure they were burnt.
But this strategy backfired. The cooks either threw out the waffles or sent them out to customers—who, in turn, often sent them back. Stuck redoing waffle orders meant that instead of making no waffles, I was forced to make twice as many.
At the end of that first shift, Danny and Ricky and the three waitresses invited me to join them at the bar next door for their usual postshift drinks. After the unexpected day in the suds, I could use the refreshment. Danny bought me a beer, commended me on my sink-work and joked, “But we won’t talk about your cooking.”
The two cooks, it was revealed, were married to two of the waitresses. The third waitress wasn’t related by blood or marriage to the others, yet she was still considered kin.
“We’re all like family,” Ricky explained to me as he spread his arms out to indicate everyone at the table—including me.
Unlike at the Fish Shanty—where my status as a foreigner in a small-town family restaurant branded me an outsider—at this place, by simply being an employee, I was considered a member of the clan.
On this occasion, though, the family only wanted to bitch about the black sheep—the departed Dish Mistress. They described her with terms like “fucking nuts” and “crazy bitch” and tried to convince me that the terms were fitting. But I couldn’t bear to hear anyone denigrate my heroine. So after drinking just the one beer, I told them I’d see them in the morning and then split.
After that, I was dishing for them almost every day from six a.m. till three p.m. The occasional waffling was offset by the quirky kitchen, the decent cash and—especially—the food. Danny and Ricky encouraged me to forgo the Bus Tub Buffet and order whatever I wanted from the menu. So every day I went to work with the goal of gorging enough food to not have to eat again until I was back at work the following day. And if I didn’t work that next day, then I really needed to sock it away to hold myself over.
For example, on one shift I managed to consume: a garlic bagel with cream cheese, a bowl of cereal, apple juice, three strawberry-topped pancakes, a slice of cheesecake, orange juice, a Swiss/tomato sandwich, a bowl of fruit, a banana, a blueberry muffin, grape juice, a pineapple-walnut muffin, two brownie sundaes, a plain bagel with cream cheese, a plate of French fries, cranberry juice, milk, plus many handfuls of blueberries, walnuts, chocolate chips, chopped bell pepper, broccoli and hunks of cheese. Like a squirrel stuffing his cheeks with nuts to bury in the ground to get through winter, I’d stuff my face with grub to bury in my stomach. And it always got me through the next workless day.
The only thing I never ate was waffles, because I’d have to make them. And I was still dragging ass on that front. In addition to under-and overcooking the waffles, I took to purposely spilling the batter all over the counter so that, by midmorning, we’d run out of the goo and waffles would be eighty-sixed from the menu.
I also began just ignoring the “Waffle!” command. Five minutes after the rest of an order was ready to be sent out, when Danny would ask, “Pete, where’s that waffle?” I’d say, “Waffle? What waffle?”
Since they were convinced that I was plain stupid, the cooks seemed to get more frustrated than angry. But that didn’t prevent them from still yelling “Waffle!” a couple times a day. If anything, it only made them yell it louder.
That was, until one busy Saturday morning when Danny received a ticket and called it out to Ricky.
“Mushroom omelet!…potatoes!…wheat toast!…waffle!”
I cringed.
But then Danny added, “Scratch that, no waffle!” To the waitresses, he shouted, “Eighty-six the waffles—Pete’s working today!”
And that was that. Without using physical force, real or threatened—just good old-fashioned civil disobedience—victory was achieved. From that day on, I never made another waffle.
I was still expected to join the postshift jaunts to the bar next door, though. But after nine hours of slaving over the sinks and forcing myself to eat as much as possible, come closing time, my mind was fixed only on lying down. Besides, after working alongside my coworkers all day, the last thing I wanted to do was rehash with them—in painstaking detail—all of the day’s events. So every afternoon, I opted out of the bar invitation via some excuse: didn’t feel well, had to make a phone call, K. J. was waiting for me….
But each excuse was met with an offered compromise: Take an aspirin, use the restaurant’s phone, invite K. J. along….
Come November, the pressure really mounted. My coworkers were planning a huge after-hours Thanksgiving dinner to be held right there in the restaurant. My presence was expected.
“C’mon, dude, you don’t have any family in New Hampshire,” Danny said. “Ya gotta come.”
But I didn’t gotta and I didn’t go.
If indeed I was a member of this restaurant family, then I played the same role in it that I did in my own. I was the quiet and disappointing son who gladly stuck around for the free eats but who didn’t stick around any longer than he had to.