The Life Expectancy of a Dish Washer

____There are no available statistics for the average duration of employment as a dishwasher. That’s not surprising. It’s also not something I need for this paper, because I’ve been a dishwasher for the last three years so I have some familiarity with the subject. Too much familiarity if I’m being honest. Lack of vetted statistics aside, a person will normally be a dishwasher for only six to nine months for two reasons: they only accepted the job in the hope eventual advancement, or they can’t handle it and quit.

____My career as a dishwasher began in April ‘08 and has been exclusively with the Red Lion hotel in Kennewick. I had no plans for advancement, though I was assured it was “a transient position” (the then executive chef’s words, reprinted for posterity. not mine.) and I would be in another department soon enough. As if that poorly worded promise wasn’t enough, I also desperately needed work and this was the first opportunity I had in months. I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at a job supposedly reserved for homeless people, so I accepted the position. I remember the rationalizations I made, of finding a better job or making my way to another position, but only one of them took root: I no longer had to deal with the general or shopping public.

____Before dish washing I worked at an Amazon call center, and before that I worked at Hastings. For years my careers revolved around customer service and I had simply burned out on being helpful and courteous. Being a dishwasher meant zero contact with people that weren’t employees, and that was all I needed to know. I took that idea, that simple notion of isolation, and I nurtured it. I could finally do a job without interruption, and I was sure that I could do it well. After a month of it, I wasn’t.

____I wasn’t fast enough, I didn’t know where things went and I was sure that everyone hated me. The dishes were clean, which was an unthinkable prospect at the time, but it wasn’t enough. The previous dishwasher, who became a cook when I showed up, would constantly tell me how badly I was doing. Things like “You’re takin’ way too long washin’ them dishes. You gotta go faster, or else.” or, “You’re pissin’ off other departments by not keeping those silverware caddies full.” I would feel worthless and get infuriated to the point of desperately wishing I could quit, if just to make her be dishwasher again. She couldn’t even get things clean, which made my slow but steady output something of a revelation in comparison.

____It would take another month before I learned where everything went, even longer for my speed to improve and accept that not everyone hated me. After four months, the executive chef that hired me was replaced, and my situation changed for the better in every way. Brandon had worked at the Richland property as a sous chef for years, so this was his promotion. He was closer to my age than anyone else in the kitchen, and that made it easier for me to open up and begin to actually enjoy my time at work. This became even easier when Mike, his friend and co-worker from Richland, came to work there as well. He was a few years younger, but we had much of the same interests and similar senses of humor. It was then that I began to develop actual friendships, and it made the sometimes difficult job of washing dishes somehow bearable.

____When I reached my own six month mark, I wasn’t feeling the stress inherent to the position. I was having fun with friends where I also happened to clean bits of food from plates and assorted cutlery. At nine months I was more pre-occupied with my second quarter of college than I was with my dreadful job. I instead marked the year it had been since I left Amazon, and how nice it was to not have angry people screaming at me over the phone anymore. It would take roughly a year until I began to succumb to the pressures of being a dishwasher, aided entirely by the annual Mother’s Day brunch. In no uncertain terms, that event is responsible for more instances of employee self-termination (quitting, just so we’re clear) than any other. How I survived it the year before was due entirely to the help I received, and that help would no longer be there.

____I arrived at 6AM, and I did not leave until 5:30PM. I worked practically non-stop, and when I finally got home I could barely speak, let alone sit upright long enough to have some of the delicious food from my family’s own Mother’s Day celebration. It was by no means a record, because in July of ’08 I worked a 14 hour shift, 11AM to 1AM, with a single 10 minute break seven hours in. My family didn’t know where I was and they even began to worry that I might have died. Nevertheless, that brunch is what started me on the slow decline into the distinct phases of burnout, apathy and genuine harm to my well-being.