Confused? Feel left behind? Ketchup. Part one is here. Part two is here.

The rest of my first day went the same as any other dish shift I had worked at any other restaurant. I watched through the window as the lunch crowd came in and sat. Couples old and young. Business people. Going out for a nice lunch never registered to me. I was a slice of pizza type guy. Food was of no importance in my life. When I got hungry I cooked myself a couple of eggs. Breakfast, if I ate it at all, usually toast with peanut butter. Every so often I’d splurge and buy a chicken marinara with a side of spaghetti.

Toward the end of my shift Grey came back and asked me if I wanted a pizza. I told him yes and when he asked what I wanted on it I told him to surprise me. Ten minutes later or so he brought me a small pie on one of the shiny metal disks I had been scrubbing all day throughout lunch service. Sausage, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers. Not a deep dish soggy pizza like the ones I had grown up eating my whole life but thin and crusty, with a tinge of smoke flavor from the oven. There were little black bubbles in the crust where the fire had eaten away at the air contained within the dough. Little crispy burnt parts that tasted terrible alone but added to the whole experience when eaten with everything else. I gobbled the whole thing down, even the crust which was something I never had enjoyed on any pizza ever. For me it was always about the cheese and the toppings but this was something entirely new and delicious.  

The day wound down and as I got ready to leave, Kevin came back into the kitchen and told me he wanted to speak to me about something. His mood had changed to a more somber, sort of deflated version of himself compared to the robust, energetic person from earlier that morning. He seemed shorter, smaller than I remembered. I followed him down the hallway to his office and sat in the chair again. He sat and crossed his leg high. 

“I need to talk to you about alcohol,” he said. 

“Uh, ok?” I crossed my legs. 

“It’s dangerous. You’re young. A lot of the people here, the cooks, they drink heavily.”

“I didn’t really talk to them about that.”

“It’s an elevator that only goes down but you can get off at any time you want.”

“Ok.”

“I’m an alcoholic.”

“Yeah, that’s why you come in late.”

“I go to a meeting every morning at six. Every day. I haven’t had a drop to drink for fifteen years. I’m a sponsor for many others.”

“That’s great.”

“How do you like the job?”

“Well, it’s dishwashing. It’s fine.”

“It isn’t the job itself, it’s how we perform when we do it. Don’t see yourself as a dishwasher. See yourself as the work you do, the performance. If you see yourself simply as a dishwasher you’ll never get anywhere in life.”

“But that’s what I am.”

“But you’re an important piece of the restaurant. Maybe the most important. Without you there are no pots to boil water in, no plates for customers to eat off, no silverware for them, no pans to cook with. Do you see?”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t the job we do, it’s the effort we put into it. We’re ll part of a cycle, a unit. If you can’t put the effort into being a dishwasher you won’t be able to put effort into anything in your goddam fucking life.”

I thought about that a minute. It made no sense. Dishwashing was miserable. My hands were pruny and white from being immersed in hot water and soap for seven and a half hours. There were criss crosses of shallow lacerations on my hands from the steel wool. My body ached, especially my shoulders, from the pots. 

“I understand,” I said. The office, the madness of all the San Marzano tomato cans and boxes closed in on me. All I wanted was to punch out and leave. 

“Ok, buddy,” he said. “Get the hell out of here and have a great day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I walked out of the office and down to the very back hallway, changed into my normal clothes and put the dish t-shirt in the hamper. I hung the pants on a hook for tomorrow. It was later than usual and when I finished changing, the night crew began to trickle in. They looked different from the day guys. Pirates one and all. Taller and thinner. More facial hair, well, except for her, this stunning girl with short red hair. She was pale, thin, muscular, and had blue eyes. Tall, wispy. They all walked in, one by one and introduced themselves. She was Colleen. There was a skinny guy ropey with muscle, scruffy hair and a goatee who introduced himself as Jim, but they all called him Bunzer. Another tall skinny guy with a ponytail and shitty mustache, named Joey, who they called Crazylegs and a tall, thin, good looking fellow, also with a ponytail, named Dustin. There was a camaraderie among them that lacked with the day guys. They spoke of the previous night, laughing about all the drinks they had at some bar in town. I was still under twenty one, only twenty, and hearing them speak about this life out of my reach was like hearing people talk about a faraway, fantastical land.  

“You’re the new dishwasher?” Colleen said. 

“Yes,” I said.

“Dish dog,” Bunzer said. 

“Dish pig,” Crazylegs said. 

They all laughed. 

“Don’t let those fools bother you,” she said. She smiled and whipped her shirt off right in front of all of us. The others paid no notice. I saw the outline of her ribs. She wore a bra to contain her impressive, perfect breasts. I looked away, turning as red as her hair. To the others this was normal. I peeked at her again from the corner of my eye as she pulled off her jeans and pulled on her chef pants. Not the baggy, shitty ones I wore but a pair of fitted, houndstooth Bragards like Kevin’s. They gripped her hips and ass marvelously. The others were more ragtag, donning chef coats but wearing the same strange baggy black chef pants that I did but they wore rubber clogs instead of sneakers. They all changed together as she did. Normal, a mixed locker room. They never even looked her way, at her long freckled legs and pink lace panties. 

I left them all there chuckling to themselves, punched out, and went up the stairs out into the marketplace. As I walked home I thought about what Kevin had said, about alcohol, about how none of what he said made any sense to me. Why put effort into doing something that was beneath me? Dishwashing meant nothing. It was about the money and nothing else. It sucked. A horrible thing I had to do to pay the bills. I got home and my roommate asked me if I wanted to get some beers. We asked the neighbor girls next door if they’d go to the store for us and they did after we bought them some too. Some friends came over. Someone rolled a joint. We watched Pulp Fiction for the millionth time. I went to bed when all the beer was gone.