I have written about cooks, chefs, and wait staff, but have given no love to those who wash and scrub the dishes and mop the floors.
So here is an ode to those with dish pan hands.
They come in all different shapes and sizes, all kinds of diverse backgrounds, many don’t stay in one place for a long time, and many use the dish room as a stepping stone onto the cook’s line, but there are individuals who strive to be professional dishwashers.
I know there are some of you out who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of a restaurant (thankfully you have me to enlighten you), but if you can imagine 8 hours of washing plates, bowls, cups and silverware, scrubbing pots and pans, washing everything the cook can find in the kitchen, cleaning the restrooms, bussing tables, spraying down the rubber mats, vacuuming the floor in the dining room, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, climbing up on the stoves to get the grease filters from the vents, and carrying bus tubs full of dishware all day; all for minimum wage; then you just imagined a day that the genius ponders and the insane laments.
They are called by many names-dish dogs, pearl divers, burros, dish rats and sanitation engineers, but whatever moniker we attach to their service, the restaurant, would not run efficiently without them. They are the back bone of the industry, sometimes working harder and making less than everybody else. Ask any self respecting chef about their dishwashers, and they will tell you they feed them well and they treat them with love and esteem, because if they walk out- guess who has to do the dishes?
