This is continued from several posts a few weeks back. Here’s parts one, two, and three if you want to catch up.

The alarm rang at six thirty and so did the pain in my shoulders. I have no idea how I put my feet on the carpet and walked into the shower but I made it down into the restaurant and punched in at 6:59. The guys were all there. Focused and intent on their work. They nodded as I came in. I was clothed in my strange pants and polyester t shirt by 7:05. I found the coffee pot and had a cup while I stood in front of the dish machine in my little area. There were a few dishes left over from the night before, a bus tub full of stuff. I put that through first. I warmed up a little. Kevin came in to see if I had showed up. I could tell he was happy I did. By around eight the first of Adam’s pasta pots came through the window, steaming, cloudy as if I had never scrubbed it the previous day. The soreness I felt was unbelievable but I somehow got through the first pot. I figured I had to do it. Do it or walk out and never come back. I thought about the money I needed for rent and beer and scrubbed hell out of that pot, otherwise, I would have left and never come back. 

It’s an interesting thing to be twenty years old and have nothing in life except the desire to destroy oneself, the alcohol a balm I used to avoid whatever lurked inside my mind. My relationship with my own parents at that time was non existent. My dad lived in town, my mom lived in the town over, yet I rarely saw them. When holidays came around, that’s when my drinking, weed smoking, and drug use intensified. Thanksgiving and Christmas a hassle with each parent vying for my affection and time. As a kid, I started those mornings at my mother’s and then finished them at my father’s only to be brought back to my mother’s. There was no deal on their part regarding whether or not they could set aside differences in order for us to have a normal Christmas. I say all this as an entitled middle class kid from the suburbs. Real hardship never near me. In my entire childhood I may have gone to bed hungry one night. I remember when my mom once forgot to pay the electric bill and the lights didn’t turn on. That was it. I lived the American experience, one where there was nothing to worry about so I had to focus on my own misery. Yes, there were events I had no control over, but something weird had developed and made me softer than catshit. 

The day my dad taught me to ride a bike, he took me out into the neighbor’s yard across the road because it was longer and more level than ours. All he did was hold the back of the seat and run beside me while I pumped the pedals. It took very little time, maybe a half dozen runs for me to realize he no longer ran behind me and I had pedaled on my own, free. Instead of stopping I tore through the neighbor’s lawn and turned right in her driveway and then onto the rough dirt road and continued all the way up the long hill, a huge stretch, until I got to the very top, a hill our cars had trouble climbing in the winter, my little five year old legs giving every last ounce of energy before I let the bike crash to the ground. I hopped off, and ran away from it, tears streaming down my face. It’s easy to decipher this event. I had always been a quick learner and even quicker at giving up. At one point I was in all the advanced classes in elementary school, growing bored with the nerds and saw how my friends were in the lower ranked classes. I had left them behind and hated the older dorks so I began making mistakes on purpose in order to be sent down to the easy classes again. I honored loyalty over personal advancement. Once I returned to my friends I helped them all and let them copy my homework so they would feel proud and not ashamed of themselves. We rose up the ranks together. In order to pinpoint where this part of me came from I would have to look at my parents, but there’s a possibility genetics play a part. Would I have developed to such a point at the age of five to already have mastered self sabotage and quitting while ahead? Did I have the wherewithal or was it instinctual? I was intelligent but unable to apply myself. So again, the question is where did this come from? Simple depression? Did seeing my parents fight give me some sort of sense that the world was dark and angry? I’ll never be sure. Maybe it was the dark hand of comfort that destroyed me. 

One thing I am sure of, I was a quitter through and through. When things got rough, I bounced out, always taking the easier route. Maybe because I was able to grasp concepts and ideas easily which left me without a true challenge. All I can say is I had many opportunities, and quit when the going got hard. 

Except for that damn dish pit. The one damn thing, looking back, that I wish I had walked away from and instead saw through to the bitter fucking end. I continued to scrub those damn pots, day in and day out. I took the abuse from Kevin. On the days when a single blemish remained on a pot’s exterior and he brought it back through for me, all I did was put my head down and scrub harder and as the months passed by, it got easier, and I got harder. Determined to scrub the damn things until there was nothing left. And then one day, one of them imploded in the dish machine. Unfortunately I wasn’t around witness this. After the night’s service was over, there was no need to scrub the sides of them, but they required sanitization and cleaning for Adam’s big pasta boil in the morning before lunch service. When I came in one morning there was a misshapen lump waiting for me a. An older pot I had scrubbed so hard over the months that it had become paper thin and collapsed in on itself due to the heat and pressure of the dish machine. I put it aside, on the prep table, for Kevin to see when he came in. 

“What the fuck is this,” he said as he repeated his morning routine, fresh from his meeting, still in civilian garb. 

“It’s one of the pots.”

“I’ve got another in dry storage.” He barely blinked before walking away. 

That day, during a lull in service, he took me aside and over to a different area of the kitchen, in front of a deli slicer. 

“See all this salami?” He said. “I need it sliced.”

“Ok.”

“Slice it nice and thin, just like this.” He pushed on the slicer and produced a thin round disk into his left hand and held it in front of my face about a few inches. “See, just like this.”

“Ok.” I went at it. Easy. Mind numbing. I kept neat piles. I counted the slices and stacked them on wax paper Kevin had already put down on the counter. Twenty per stack. As a kid I did this with all my change. Stacks of pennies, quarters, dimes, and nickels on the dresser. When any stack got past five, I created a new stack. Neatly organized rows. The slicer whirring, craving my fingers and thumb. 

I finished and Kevin came over to inspect the job. He said nothing except “Let me show you how to clean this fucking slicer now.” He first dismantled the whole thing, unscrewed a bunch of wing nuts and showed me how to unhitch the baffle plate, food carriage, and slicing guard. He brought these pieces to the dish area and then came back and cranked the thickness adjustment knob of the slicer to zero to bring the blade flush with the feeder tray. 

“Now the best part of the day,” he said. He cocked a finger at me and I watched as he walked over to the dish area once again. He bent over and grabbed a red one gallon bucket, added an obscene amount of the Total Quality pink soap and a capful of bleach, then turned to me and said “This is how we clean everything. Do you fucking understand? Hot soapy, bleachy water. Always. Hot soapy, bleachy water” while filling the bucket from the sink tap. He punctuated his mantra by plunking both the abrasive green scrubby and the steel wool into the awaiting foam. He then walked back over to the slicer. I followed. 

“Clean it like me. Every time.” Kevin started by unplugging the slicer then pulled the green scrubby from its home and began his shellacking by slopping the sudsy water all over the machine. Bailing it from the bucket. The suds immediately ran off the slicer and onto the table and eventually down the front of his apron, onto the floor, onto the bottom shelf, the floor. He scrubbed the slicer clean, going over and over the same spots, getting into the cracks. He plugged it back in with sudsy hands and turned the slicer on and the blade whirred, spitting soapy water into his face. “Yaaaaargh!” He screamed and rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, winced but didn’t back down and held the scrubby against the blade as it turned, one eye open, then he did the back side. He unplugged the machine again and muscled it to the other side of the table, the rubber feet squeaking in the pools of suds. The vein on his forehead pulsing. His eyes mad and intense. Cleaning mode. He noticed some stains on the wall and started to scour them as well, going over the knobby plastic and even the electrical outlets with the scrubby. I expected him to freeze up as he was jolted with electricity, I almost hoped for it, but he continued on, unharmed. Teddy walked by and shot an empathetic glance but knew not to interfere nor disrupt, his pace more hurried as he got in and out without being seen. 

“Help me with this fucking table,” he said. He grabbed one end and I the other. We moved it away from the wall. Most of the bucket was gone. He grabbed it and thrust it at me. “Go fill this,” he said. “Hot soapy, bleachy water. Hot soapy, bleachy water.” I obeyed and returned with more of his potion. On his hands and knees now, behind the table, he scrubbed the tile where the wall met the floor. Suds and water pooling. Wall shining. The slicer and metal table sparkling. 

“Here,” he said from behind the table, motioning with a plastic lexan bin full of orzo. I grabbed it and put it on the table behind me. “This one too,” he said, his head under the table peeking out as he pushed another lexan full of rice in my direction as he scrubbed the bottom shelf, more water cascading onto the floor. 

“You see this fucking wall?” He said, his twisted face poking out at me from below. “This is fucking disgusting. Look at this.” He scrubbed with intensity. “This wall is fucking dirty. What the fuck? What the fucking fuck?”

I could only be in awe. Full of wonder at this insanity, this dedication. Nothing else existed in that space and time. Kevin stood up. He was absolutely soaked, sweaty, looking as if he’d climbed out of the foam bucker, eyes bloodshot and burning like hot coals, the vein in his forehead throbbing like some giant artery mainlining pure OCD adrenaline into his brain. He stood and went back to the dish pit with the bucket, muttering to himself and what I thought I heard as “Hot soapy, bleachy water.” Over and over. Less mantra now, more Turret’s Syndrome. He dumped the bucket out and came back with a dust pan and a squeegee. He pushed me out of the way and began pulling the squeegee against the table and into the pan and then he paced back over, dumping the dirty water into the sink. Back again. Back and forth. In this manner he cleaned up most of the water and suds before administering his final coupe de grace, several folded towels that he used to dry and buff the entire area to a fine sheen, the slicer, the shelf, the wall, even the floor. A pause here and there to refold the towels into neat squares that fit into the palm of his hand. Extensions of his power, his will. Expendable talismans. 

The area he had assaulted now radiated with his righteous zeal, his spirit of sanitization. He moved the slicer back into place. This episode had left him spoiled and defeated. His shoulders slumped. His chef coat was soaked. 

“Go clean the rest of that and put this all fucking bullshit together,” he said, “Hot soapy, bleachy water” and disappeared from the kitchen, through the back door. Did I witness greatness? Passion? Or just plain old mental illness? From my previous experience in kitchens I’d discovered quickly that these were places where the sick, murderous, and previously incarcerated dwelled. There really was no other place where the degenerates of the world were able to coexist and still be paid. And no place they would rather be. Kitchens were safe havens. Places where all that mattered was the job you did. As long as you showed up and did well, you could be the worst human being possible. Work ethic was the only trait that mattered. The only commandments were thou shalt not get caught for murder lest ye be late for work, and thou shalt not get caught for stealing lest ye be sacked. That was it. Diluted down even further it was work hard and don’t get caught for doing stupid shit, show up on time, keep your knife sharp and don’t be the weak link in the chain. 

I cleaned the slicer parts, put them through the machine, and screwed the whole contraption back tighter, the pieces radiating heat from the machine’s blister inducing sanitize cycle. Kevin arrived as I did this, a new coat and pair of pants on, spotless, fresh, revived now, snug in his armor of starched Egyptian cotton. A steaming mug of black coffee in his hand. His soft side had returned. He told me I did well with the salami.

“I’m sorry for getting a little out of control there,” he said. “It’s just that, well, I fucking hate dirt, grime, stains, bacteria. I fucking hate them all.” He took a series of slow deep breaths to calm himself.

“Ok.” 

He turned and disappeared back into the back door down to his office.