by Pete Jordan
“Yeah,” I said.
“My name’s Lima,” he said. “Follow me.”
He led me upstairs to the employee-only cafeteria, where I sat and waited for Tony, the dishroom steward. As “If you like pina coladas” played over the cafeteria’s speakers, I looked around at the dozens of other workers on their breaks. Everyone was dressed in some sort of costume, er, uniform—from the boobs-spilling-out-of-their-tops cocktail waitresses to the card dealers and housekeepers and bartenders. Their garish outfits looked as if a partially digested box of crayons had been barfed all over them.
Then I watched two dozen workers file past Tony’s table. Though they represented a mix of ages, ethnicities and genders, they were all clad in the same navy-blue short-sleeve jumpsuits. Half of them were day-shift dishers signing out; the other half swing-shift dishers signing in. Maybe my aversion to uniforms actually stemmed from never having seen one that suited me. Because now, I was having second thoughts about my company-duds rule. In contrast with the other employees, the pearl divers looked so damn sharp in their outfits, I instantly thought, I want one!
When the crowd of dishers thinned out, Tony told Lima, “Take Pete to wardrobe and get him suited up.”
Lima led me up to the wardrobe department, where I was assigned a locker and issued my very own size “large/long” dishman’s jumpsuit.
That night I worked in the buffet dishroom with Lima and three others. When the buffet closed for the night, we still had a couple hours before our shift ended. While the other three drifted off to the casino’s other dishpits, Lima and I were the last ones out of the buffet.
“Follow me,” he said.
I followed Lima down some stairs, first to the basement and then farther down to the sub-basement. This was exciting. Before I’d even been hired, friends had told me of the mysterious tunnels beneath all the old downtown buildings. Bootleggers had used the tunnels to shuttle illicit booze to the casinos during Prohibition.
Through the dark, dank passages, we walked until we came to a wooden door. Hand-written on it were the words: “Darryl’s Room”.
“This is Darryl’s Room,” Lima said. He opened the door. Inside the small storage room, stacks of dust-covered dishes sat on shelves.
“Who’s Darryl?” I asked.
Darryl, Lima explained, was a dishwasher from years before. He often snuck away from work to nap in this storage room. One day, he failed to awaken from his nap; it was days before his lifeless body was discovered. In his honor, someone had since written on the door “Darryl’s Room.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Lima said.
“What, he just napped himself to death?”
Lima shrugged his shoulders. “No one knows.”
For a few weeks, I bounced from pit to pit. Some nights I worked in the buffet, other nights in the Italian restaurant; some nights in the steakhouse, other nights in the banquet kitchen or the room-service kitchen.
No matter where I worked, I usually ended up hanging out with Lima, who, prior to his six years at Harrah’s, had worked as a carpenter in his native Honduras. His annual routine was to dish in Reno for eight months and then take his savings down to Honduras to live with the wife and kids for four months.
Lima even invited me to go to Honduras with him, where, he said, with my dishwasher’s earnings, I could live like a king and easily find a wife.
“Yeah, but she’d probably want me to speak Spanish.”
“No, I can translate for you!” he said.
“But isn’t it hot down there?”
“Yes!” he said. “Not like here—it’s always hot.”
Too hot, I thought.
Like me, Lima liked to wander. The rule of thumb among the swing-shift dish crew was that it was okay to disappear for a spell, as long as no one was stuck shouldering too much of a load. While most of the others used the opportunity to socialize in the other dishrooms, Lima preferred to explore the never-ending labyrinth of passageways throughout the complex. For fun, he’d lead me around until I was thoroughly confused and then ask me to guess where we were. After I’d guess, he’d reveal how wrong I was.
Other times we’d cut across the casino’s large gambling floor. When we did, I’d pretend we weren’t dishwashers heading from one dishroom to another. Rather, we were like the casino’s Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin impersonators who mingled about entertaining the gamblers. Except, as two random jumpsuited guys passing in the background, we were entertainers on a subtler level—not headliners, but the necessary extras who set the scene.
On the casino floor—whether in character or not—my eyes were locked in on finding change. That a gazillion coins were in the building was made abundantly clear by the constant clattering as slot machines pissed out endless streams of coinage into the metal urinals beneath them. From those metal basins, or from the gamblers’ plastic carrying cups, coins had surely fallen to the floor. But where were they? It turned out, the casino already had men on the case. Elderly Filipinos shuffled about with brooms and long-armed dustpans sweeping up stray gum wrappers, cigarette butts—and coins. What a job! They were essentially employed to find—and pocket—the change! But try as I might, I couldn’t envy them—not in the insufferable rainbow-colored vests they had to wear.
One night, looking to emulate the napping martyr, I slipped out of the banquet dishpit with a couple of clean rags. Down in the sub-basement room, I arranged my rag pillow on the cold concrete floor, turned out the light and lay down on my back. From the hall, light seeped in under the door. Machinery hummed in the distance. I closed my eyes.
As I tried to get comfortable, my thoughts drifted to Darryl. How had he died? By natural causes? Had one of these shelves of dishes toppled on him? A gas leak?
My eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Okay, I told myself, let’s get serious. I rolled onto my left side and closed my eyes again and exhaled. Aah…
How long had he been there? Who’d found him? Where’d he been lying?
I was looking around.
On my back again; eyes closed. Concentrate, I commanded.
How’d Darryl managed to relax on a surface so icy? Had he constructed some sort of rag mattress? Was he able to get any shut-eye?
Now on my right side, I wondered if there’d even been a Darryl. Maybe he was merely a legend created by management to discourage dish dog napping—a morality tale to counter plongeur morality. If that was the case, the scare tactic worked; I couldn’t sleep. But it wasn’t because I was overly concerned with my own demise—but rather, because I was so preoccupied with Darryl’s.
On my first payday, I was more than happy to redeem my paycheck at the casino’s cashier window and receive my free drink token. Liquored up and with a pocketful of cash, I was essentially being challenged by Harrah’s to get past all the slot machines and card tables without leaving behind some of my pay—if not all of it—in the casino. But it’d take more than free booze to get this cheapskate to part with any of his cash. If I gave a single nickel back to my employer, it’d essentially mean taking a cut in pay—and I’d be forced to kick my own self in the ass for being so stupid.
Instead I took my pay and skipped up the street to another casino. There, I stood by the dime slots. When a cocktail waitress would walk by, I’d drop a dime in the machine and—as a rightful gambler—give her my order for a complimentary beer. I’d keep a tight grip on my dimes until she returned with my beer. Then I’d drop another dime and immediately ask for another round.
After having worked a couple nights straight in the steakhouse pit—a solo gig that hampered my ability to wander—I was stoked to be assigned to the employee cafeteria dishroom. Not only was it the one dishpit of the casino’s six that I’d yet to work in, but working with a crew of four others, I’d be able to roam around once again.
When I arrived in the cafeteria dishroom, Charlie walked up to me and said, “C’mon, I’ll show you what to do.”
&n
bsp; I’d seen Charlie around but had never worked with him because he only worked this one pit.
Charlie led me over to the conveyor belt that carried the trays of dirty dishes back from the dining area. He scraped some dishes and loaded them in the dish racks.
“See how I’m doing it?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“See?” he repeated.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got it.”
He stepped aside. “Now you try.”
As I scraped the dishes and loaded them in the racks, Charlie stood uncomfortably close. He continued to watch.
“Dude,” I said, “I can handle it.”
Charlie moved back a few feet. Yet he kept eyeing me.
For about thirty seconds, I scraped until Charlie said, “No, no, you can’t do that.”
He pointed at some chicken bones and napkins on the floor. Not all of my scrapings had found their way into the garbage can.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll clean it up later.”
“It’s not okay,” he said. “You’ve gotta clean that up now!”
In the weeks I’d been there, I’d had no problems with any of the fifteen or so other swing-shift dishers. And none of them had ever voiced any problems about me. But now, within sixty seconds of working with this sourpuss, he was breaking my balls.
But I ignored him and kept on scraping.
Charlie didn’t leave.
“Listen, I’m the head dishwasher here,” he said. “And you have to clean that up.”
I stopped scraping.
Head dishwasher? Was he for real? The authoritative scowl on his face said yes.
I knew there was no way I could endure another seven hours and fifty-nine minutes working with some delusional jerk who wanted to hang a title like that on himself.
Normally, I would’ve then dramatically pulled off my apron and stomped away in a huff. But I wore no apron. And while pulling off my jumpsuit would’ve made a dramatic statement, standing there in my drawers wouldn’t exactly convey the statement I was looking to make.
So instead I just said, “Fuck you.”
Then I stomped away in a huff up to the wardrobe department and changed back into my street clothes.
A week later, those same street clothes became work clothes again at a Main Street café in Newton, Kansas. I was supposed to dish in a café there and stay in the apartment above with the café owner. But when the owner’s boyfriend discovered that some passing-through-town dishman was to stay with his girlfriend, he raised a ruckus and nixed the plan. So instead I took up an even tastier position: dishing in Wichita, Kansas (#25), at a mom-and-pop malt shop. There, I wore my street clothes, answered to no head dishwashers and served as a willing test subject for all the soda jerk’s experimental concoctions.
After I moved on from Kansas, I found two-thirds of a penny in the Oklahoma City bus station and was quite pleased with myself when, twenty minutes later, I was able to pass it along when purchasing a 49-cent Fudgsicle. Then, while house-and dog-sitting in New Orleans, I got a call from Amy Joy. She was being driven down from Missouri and the next morning would be catching a flight from New Orleans back to Portland.
“Do you think I could spend the night with you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
When she arrived that evening, she asked, “Can you recommend a good restaurant in the area?”
Not ever having eaten in a restaurant in New Orleans, I had to tell her, “No.”
“Aw,” she said. “But I wanted to go out to dinner with you.”
Eat out? That afternoon I’d just spent 34 cents on a newly designed box of Schwegmann brand macaroni and cheese. My stomach was set on eating it and my heart was set on cutting out the box cover to add it, as #211, to my collection.
“I was just about to whip up some mac-n-cheese,” I told her. “But we can split it if you want.”
“No,” she said. “I was really hoping to treat you to dinner—for letting me stay here.”
“Oh,” I said. “In that case, there’s some restaurant around the corner.”
We walked around the corner. It was a pizza place. Well, not really. A pizza place is somewhere where you can walk up to the counter and say, “Gimme a slice” and one gets handed to you on a paper plate. Though this place did sell pizzas, its toppings menu included crap like shrimp and roasted eggplant. Sitting and looking at the other diners’ puny individual pizzas and seeing the listed prices, I thought, Thirteen bucks for one of those itsy-bitsy things?
But Amy Joy thought otherwise.
“Those look delicious,” she said.
I felt bad for her spending so much money for me to eat such a paltry amount of food. So I just ordered a simple cheese pizza—hold the weirdo toppings.
Amy Joy ordered us a bottle of red wine. It was another first: I’d never before drank wine in a restaurant—at least not as a customer.
While she told me about her trip to visit her family in Mississippi and Missouri and I told her about my trials and tribulations of playing dog walker to a dog too old to even stand, I guzzled the wine like it was beer. I felt bad again when Amy Joy had to order another bottle, but not so bad that I didn’t refrain from guzzling after the new bottle arrived.
When the place closed, we walked back around the corner to the house. Amy Joy sat down on the couch and said, “Thanks again for letting me stay here.”
“No problem,” I said. “And thank you for feeding me.”
The hour was late and I was tipsy. It was time for bed so I went to the bedroom. A second later, I returned to the living room, steadied my gaze on Amy Joy and said, “Sleep tight.”
Then I tossed her a pillow and a blanket.
The next morning, she left for the airport. For lunch, I finally broke into my box of Schwegmann.
23
Kosherized
After bouncing around the South, the Midwest and the East Coast in the spring of 1999, I went to Portland to publish Dishwasher #16—the cafeteria issue. It was about cafeterias I’d worked in and contained news clippings about cafeteria dishers, book excerpts, some dishwashing comics and letters to the editor from fellow dish dogs about their cafeteria gigs.
While putting together the zine, I noticed in the want ads that a Jewish nursing home was in need of a dishman. Aha! Another chance to cross something off my To Do list.
The year before, I’d received a letter from a dishman who was working in a Chinese joint in Boston. He referred vaguely to special Jewish dishwashing rules and asked if I’d ever “dished kosher.” Sadly, I hadn’t. I was embarrassed to admit in my reply that I didn’t even know what kosher dishing entailed. Even more so, I was jealous that, when it came to ancient dishwashing rites, this cat had been initiated and I—the Dish Master—hadn’t!
The dishwashing traditions I was following—laziness, drunkenness and ditching jobs without even a minute’s notice—were public knowledge and only about a century old. So the idea of being entrusted with covert dishwashing traditions that were thousands of years old was tantalizing. After reading the want ad, I broke my rule about not commuting farther than a comfortable walk or bike ride to a job and jumped on a bus out to the nursing home in southwest Portland.
I filled out the paperwork—which mentioned nothing about upholding traditions—and was sent to the kitchen to talk to Riki, the kitchen manager. While waiting for her in her office, I wondered if she’d ask me if I was Jewish or what I knew about kosher dishing. If she did ask, I’d be at a loss. I kicked myself for having hurried to the place without first stopping by the library.
When Riki arrived, she glanced at my application and said, “So Pete, tell me—what recent accomplishment have you made that you’re proud of?”
“Um…,” I said, caught off guard by yet another idiotic question that boss-types learn in boss school. Of course, I thought it was a major accomplishment to be on the cusp of washing dishes in holy water with candles and incense and whatever other Catholic imagery f
rom my altar boy days I could attach to my vision of kosher dishing. But maybe that’d scare her off.
“Um, I’m kinda proud that I’ve shaved almost every day this week,” I said.
“Terrific!” she said. “Can you start right now?”
Without any questions about my faith, without being asked to pledge to uphold thousands of years of dishwashing tradition and without even being sworn to silence about the ancient secrets that I’d be entrusted with—I was apparently hired.
Riki handed me an apron and led me over to the dishroom. There, she introduced me to Martin, who was busy washing the lunch dishes.
“Martin, Pete’s going to be working with you,” she said. Then to me, she added, “Okay, Pete, Martin will show you what to do.”
As Riki left, I threw on the apron and stood ready to be initiated into the world of magical dishwashing. My new mentor, though, was in no hurry to reveal any secrets. Since Martin was silently rinsing the dishes and loading them into the machine, I took my cue and started stacking the clean plates coming out of the Hobart.
For five minutes, we worked without saying a word to each other. Then Martin came over to me.
“Hey, Pete,” he said. “You like Star Trek?”
He was wearing a Star Trek baseball cap and—visible behind his apron—a Star Trek T-shirt.
“Sorry,” I said, “I never watched that show.”
“Oh, okay,” he said.
He was obviously disappointed, so I asked, “Do you like Star Trek?”
“Oh, yeah.” He lit up. “I like all kinds of science fiction—all genres.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Who’s your favorite Star Trek character?”
As a big fan, I figured, he’d have a strong opinion on the matter. But Martin didn’t respond. He stood there, frozen, and gave no indication of what was going on in his head.
Had I said something wrong? Had I mishandled the kosher dishes or something? After waiting for his answer for about thirty seconds, I assumed our conversation was over, so I resumed stacking the dishes.