In college I drew the short end of the straw and got a campus job in the dish room. The only thing worse than working the dish room was having the breakfast shift in the dish room at 6 a.m. I have bad luck. (While we’re talking about it, I’d like to apologise for the day that I forgot to put soap in the machine for my entire shift.) There are worse jobs than scraping gooey scrambled eggs intertwined with paper napkins off plates, but when you are 17-years-old, you are too stupid to be grateful.
I went to school at T.C.U. Texas Christian University -Fort Worth and back then, there was no air conditioning in the kitchen. I hope they’ve figured another way to make folks carry the cross, so to speak. There’s a lot of steam and smoke (not from smoking, these were fundamental Baptist students) in a dish room. If you remember the scene where Dorothy meets the Wizard of Oz, dish rooms are kind of like those smoking contraptions. It’s hot, it’s steamy, but not in a romantic sort of way. There were two dishwashing people vs. 400 students at a meal. That’s a lot of hard work and bad odds on any day.
I’ve never been afraid of hard work; I just haven’t always been especially good at it. The students would line up at a small hole cut into the wall and dump their plates at the dish person. The wall was to hide the human behind it, so they could shove their stuff fast, carelessly, and without putting the silverware in the appropriate bin and still have a clean conscience. I don’t know what’s wrong with people these days.
Ten minutes before the hour, there’s a huge influx of students dumping their dishes in order to make it to class on time. I was flustered at the incredible amount of multi-tasking and speed in which I had to work. I am methodical, detailed, and particular. I like my stuff alphabetized, clean, and in order. I do not enjoy dealing with mass volumes that have to be moved on a large scale at high speed. But I’m also competitive, so I aimed to conquer the thing and develop a method to scrape, stack, and run the bin in one successive motion. By the end of the semester, I could handle a shift on my own.
That strategy I learnt back in college, i believe, is going to help when I have a family of my own. I will be able to deal with the small heard of people who will probably leave gooey things on their plates and sometimes dump stuff at/on me in warp speed like I’m the maid with Go-Go-Gadget functionality. I'll be a super mom who's more than capable of doing 5 different things at one time.
Back then in college, it was just a job so I could support myself financially. I didn't think much of it then. What could i have learnt about cleaning after people? Now, I realise it was more than a job. It was an opportunity to develop a great work ethic that I've carried with me througout my life. I also learnt how to juggle studies and a job successfully. Another lesson would be service.
Kitchen staff at eateries are hardly recognised for their hard work. Whenever I go out to eat, i always tell the waiter to thank the kitchen staff including the dishwashers.
It's amazing when you realise that no matter how insignificant a job may seem there are valuable lessons to learn and so many opportunities to put them to good use.
written by AfroDisiac, October 08, 2008
your blog reminds me of my first job when i arrived in the states. i was a waitress at a bistro. even though i disliked it i learnt a lot about food and the industry. some of the skills i acquired back then I still use today 
