Dishwasher

by Pete Jordan

  I was the most beautiful dishwasher in the world!

  Next stop: South Carolina. Nothing stirred this itinerant dishman’s heart like the allure of a resort town and its countless dish jobs. Myrtle Beach in the summer, I envisioned, would be the height of harvest season with plenty of plum dish jobs ripe for the picking. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Myrtle Beach ranked second (behind only Atlantic City, New Jersey) among metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of employed dishwashers. Nationally, there was one dish job for every 600 people. In Myrtle Beach, it was one dish job for every 170.

  Yet, despite the existence of a reported twelve hundred dishwashing positions in Myrtle Beach, there was little evidence of them upon my arrival. Unlike my warm reception in Branson, Missouri, when I pulled into this resort town, no restaurant marquees begged for dishwashers, no newspaper want ads listed desperate pleas.

  I drove up and down along the thirty-five-mile coastline past all the dozens of restaurants and hotels—and came up with nothing.

  I popped into numerous eateries to ask for work—and popped out of each one of them still jobless.

  For several mornings, I even paced the waiting room at the seedy day-labor office, biding my time till a call came in for a dishwasher. No call ever came.

  This boomtown was a bust.

  Then one afternoon, to search for a job online, I went to the town library. While I sat and waited for an available computer, I noticed most of the others in line were talking funny.

  “You from Ireland?” I asked the teenage girl next to me.

  “Yeah, we all are,” she said, indicating the other dozen teens in the waiting area.

  “You’re here on vacation?”

  “No, we’re working here.”

  She explained that, like lots of other Irish teens, they were spending their summer breaks from school by working in Myrtle Beach as hotel housekeepers and waitresses.

  “And dishwashers?” I asked.

  “Yeah, dishwashing too.”

  Unbelievable! My own people had crossed an ocean just to snap up all the dish jobs in town! Weren’t there any dishes to be washed back in Ireland?

  I left the library with no leads and diminishing hope. A major reason why I’d taken on dishwashing in the first place was because dish jobs were so easy to land and I hated looking for work. I’d come to South Carolina to spend my time working. Instead, my time was being spent looking for work—by auto, no less, and not by foot.

  A full week after arriving, I crawled out of the van and picked up the morning newspaper. Finally, a new ad appeared. Cracker Barrel—the restaurant chain of homogenized “home cookin’” popular across the South—needed me!

  I jumped back in Crescent and raced ten miles straight to Cracker Barrel. With the van parked, I ran inside, pumped up to beat the Irish hordes to the job. At the hostess counter, my enthusiasm was rewarded only by being told it was Myrtle Beach’s other Cracker Barrel that was hiring. So I hopped back in Crescent, raced through fifteen miles of traffic back in the direction I’d just come, parked the van and ran across the parking lot. Here it was—at last—my chance to finally wash South Carolinian dishes and make the state #34!

  As I pulled open the front door, my gateway to employment was hindered. Through the doorway, a family of fatties slowly waddled out. I tapped my foot to try to hurry them along. After papa, mama and their two dumplings finally passed, I made a step to enter.

  My entry, though, was blocked again. This time, I played doorman to an even heavier family waddling into the restaurant. Watching the second fatty clan squeeze past one by one, I was struck by a harrowing image: me, clad in some company-issue polyester knit shirt, bent far over the sinks, scouring the troughs after these pigs had finished gorging their countrified slop….

  This was my dream? My life’s goal?!

  For a guy who hated working, could I have been any more masochistic than by pursuing a goal devoted to prolific amounts of work? A decade before, why hadn’t I chosen to be the guy who rode ferries in all fifty states? (If so, I’d have been much closer to being finished—just thirteen states to go.) Or to have been the guy who collected mac-n-cheese boxes from all fifty states? (Only five states to go.) Or had found change in all fifty states? (Just Hawaii left.)

  No, it had to be dishwashing.

  After the last lard-ass disappeared into the restaurant, I continued holding the door open. A dish job awaited me inside. Yet my feet wouldn’t budge.

  George Orwell wrote that dishwashing “was a thoroughly odious job—not hard, but boring and silly beyond words. It is dreadful to think that some people spend whole decades at such occupations.”

  Indeed it was dreadful to know that I’d spent over a decade at it. Worse, I faced months more of it.

  How’d this happen? I’d hoped to settle down. But here I was roaming around again.

  I’d wanted to quit dishing. But now here I was in a lather to wash the blue-rimmed plates of these Cracker Barrel pigs.

  And I’d finally answered Bukowski’s question, “What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?” But where was she? Three thousand miles away!

  I’d dished at more than eighty places in thirty-three states. Hell, thirty-three states, fifty states—what was the difference? It didn’t matter to Amy Joy if I’d dished in five hundred states. All she wanted was for us to be together in one of them. But for how much longer could I expect her to feel that way while I said my extended farewell to the dishes?

  I let go of the restaurant’s front door and watched it close before me. Then I crossed the Cracker Barrel parking lot to a street-side pay phone and used my gizmo to call Jake.

  “You still wanna buy the van?” I asked.

  His truck had been stolen the night before. He was game.

  When I hung up the phone, that was that. It was officially over. The quest had ended.

  I drove Crescent straight from the Cracker Barrel parking lot seven hundred miles to New Orleans. In a shed behind Cheryl’s house, I stored the remaining four thousand Dishwasher #16 covers. Most of the five hundred bucks from the sale of the van was spent on a plane ticket.

  When I flew to Portland a few days later, I was met at the airport by Amy Joy. She stood in her green-and-black flowery thrift-store dress. Her arms stretched open; her face beamed.

  32

  Kiss the Dishmachine Good-Bye

  The next few days were spent looking up former colleagues to announce the news.

  “I’m retired,” I told them. “The quest is dead.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Jess responded when he heard. He’d already given up the dishwashing business and was now working in a Portland video store. For ten years, he’d only known me as a pearl diver. In fact, to almost everyone who knew me, I was “that dishwashing guy.” Now all that was over—and what a relief that it was. But the feeling wouldn’t last long.

  “What are you gonna do now?” Jess asked.

  “Good question,” I said.

  I was broke and, worse still, just as clueless about finding nondishwashing work as I’d been before the quest began.

  And so, like a punch-drunk boxer who didn’t know better than to remain retired, I slunk back into the Paradox.

  “Dishwasher Pete, I heard you retired!” Caitlin exclaimed. “Too bad, ’cause we could really use you right now.”

  The café’s current disher—an art student—was a dud in the suds. Meekly I admitted I could use the cash and decided to take one last job. The kid was promptly canned that night and I started the next morning.

  For the next six weeks, I dished. In the meantime, I made arrangements to begin school at the state university in San Francisco and to rent a room in my sister’s apartment.

  Finally, one Sunday I was working what I vowed would be my final shift in a too-long dishwashing career. On that afternoon, as usual, my shirt was drenched in sweat and my back ached, but I was completely caught up. Every dish was washed and put up. The co
unters and dishmachine were wiped down. The garbage was taken out. I’d even scrubbed the mold out of the bus tubs, something that hadn’t been done in ages—if ever.

  I took a seat on a stool at the counter and Caitlin opened a beer for me.

  “Your last day, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We’ll miss you around here,” she said. “You’re the best dishwasher I’ve ever seen.”

  This was hardly the Waikiki Beach grand finale I’d often fantasized about—well, except for the part about the beer.

  There was little to celebrate. Though I was relieved to be done for real this time, I had regrets. All those years, all those jobs, all that work—and still, I hadn’t dished in all fifty states.

  Caitlin walked away to take an order. When I finished my beer, I got up to leave.

  “You’re not leaving already, are you?” she asked.

  The clock read 5:00. My shift was officially over.

  “C’mon, it’s your last day!”

  She opened me another beer.

  Again she went off to deal with a customer. While still standing, I downed the beer, then headed for the door.

  “See ya later,” I called out to Caitlin and the cooks.

  No one heard me.

  As I rode off on my bike, the afternoon sun dried the sweat from my shirt. I was five blocks away when I realized I’d forgotten to kiss the dishmachine good-bye. But I rode onward. It wasn’t worth turning back for.

  Epilogue

  Three days later, I was eight hundred miles away, back in school and sitting in the front row of the classroom. A year later, Amy Joy and I were married aboard a ferryboat crossing the San Francisco Bay.

  Then, while I was studying for a semester in Amsterdam, we were enchanted by that city’s many bikes and ferries and progressive attitudes. In all my years of trying to find a place to settle in the United States, it’d never dawned on me that what I was looking for lay beyond its borders. We decided to stay forever.

  Gaining my Irish citizenship made it legal for me—as a European Union citizen—to remain indefinitely. But now my education was rather useless. Any employer who needed a transportation planner or cyclist/pedestrian/transit-rider advocate would obviously hire someone who spoke fluent Dutch before they’d hire me. Simply put, getting a desk-sitting job in Amsterdam was out of the question.

  Amy Joy was living in the country and supporting us (as a nanny) illegally. In order for her to gain a residency permit and to be able to get legal employment (all via my Irish citizenship), I had to have an income. So I signed up as a job seeker at the government-run employment office.

  Reading the descriptions of the hundreds of available jobs was even worse than when I was sixteen years old reading the “Help Wanted” classifieds in the newspaper. I still had no experience and no skills for any of the listed positions. Worse, my Dutch didn’t exactly wow people. No jobs were to be had.

  The situation became desperate. We couldn’t last much longer on Amy Joy’s under-the-table wage. If I didn’t find a job soon, our European adventure would be over and we’d be back in the United States, where I’d not only still face the job-finding quandary, but I’d also be racked with the old predicament of where to live.

  Going to the employment office and coming away empty-handed every day was a mess of stress. It got harder and harder to walk into the apartment and report to Amy Joy that I was still unemployed. My new role as breadwinner wasn’t going well. I cursed myself for never having learned a trade when I was younger. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After all, I had been a Dish Master.

  Dishing, I thought. There was always dishwashing.

  I made up a batch of flyers that touted my qualifications and handed them out in restaurants around town. Many boss-types told me they had no openings. Others said they’d hang on to the flyer. One remarked that the flyer was “cute.” Whatever the case, no one showed the slightest interest in hiring me.

  Then, after several days—and dozens of restaurants—without any luck, someone finally set me straight.

  In an Australian-themed restaurant, the kitchen manager told me that even if he had a dishwasher opening, he wouldn’t hire me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because even if you are the world’s greatest dishwasher—as your little note claims—I simply can’t afford you.”

  “I’m not asking for much,” I protested.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s safe to say you’re older than twenty-three, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and then some.”

  “Then according to Dutch law, I’d have to pay you the full minimum wage. But if I hire a sixteen-year-old to wash the dishes, I pay him a minimum wage that’s half yours.”

  I nodded while he explained the “graduated minimum wage,” how it increased with an employee’s age until topping out at twenty-three.

  “All I need is my dishes washed and—no offense—I don’t really need the world’s greatest to do it when I can get any teenager to do it for cheaper.”

  My nodding slowed as I absorbed what he was saying.

  “And you’ll hear the same story from every restaurant owner in this city.”

  So it’d come to this. Not only was I not qualified to do anything else, but the one thing I could do, I was now overqualified for.

  In the city where many Americans go to indulge in their vices like pot-smoking and legalized prostitution, I found myself cut off from my own vice, cold turkey.

  Author’s Note

  If you were one of the thousands of people who ordered—and never received—a copy of Dishwasher #16 (among other things), sorry about that. Please get in touch and I’ll make good on your order.

  Write to: wheresmystuff@dishwasherpete.com.

  Acknowledgments

  My bumbling through life—the result of which is this book—couldn’t have happened without the great many people who lent a hand along the way. Therefore, my deepest gratitude goes out to my mom, Sally Jordan, my siblings—Cathie, Johnny, Joe, Sheila—and to Aaron Walburg, Alex Hestoft, Alexis Buss, Alisa Dix, Andy Upright, Ann Cavness, Ann Sterzinger, Bob Helms, Bob Liek, Brian Bagdonas, Caitlin Troutman, Chris “Brutus” Christman, Colleen McNeilly, Craig Piper, Dameon Waggoner, Dan Benavidez, Dave Hernandez, David Naylor, Don Godwin, Doug Biggert, Doug Rogers, Ducky DooLittle, Edith and Rob Abeyta, Elaine Riegler, Elaine Koplow, Emily Elders, Eric Bagdonas, Fred Allen, Gina Amann, Grant Grober, Greg Davis, Greg Pierce, Hawthorne Hunt, Hector Welch, Ira Glass, Jake Springfield, Janelle Hessig, Jeanne M., Jeff Grimes, Jeff Kelly, Jeff Shelton, Jen Dolan, Jennifer Phistry, Jeni Matson, Jess Hilliard, Jim Thompson, John Gerken, Jon Sadler, Josh Baker, Julie Shapiro, Julie Snyder, Karl Jayne, Kathleen “Beanie” Keller, Kathy Jensen, Kathy Molloy, Kerry McCrackin, Lara Mulvaney, Larry Naylor, Leroy Miles, Lucas Bennett, Miss Lindsey, Marianne Combs, Megan Kelso, Melanie Brown, Melody Jordan, Michelle Bergstrom, Ned Simonson, Nell Zink, Paul Curran, Paul Tough, Pete Menchetti, Phil Snyder, Sammy Travis, Sara Sandberg, Sarah Boonstoppel, Satchel Raye, Scott Eggert, Scott Gregory, Scott Huffines, Sean Tejaratchi, Shelley Brannan, Stephen Duncombe, Steven Svymbersky, Suzy O’Brien, Sven Holmberg, Tanio Klyce, Tess, Tony Peterson, Tony Slad, the entire Tuepker family, and, of course, especially Amy Joy and Ferris.

  Special thanks to Erin Yanke and Rebecca Gilbert for their many years of forwarding my mail and to Cheryl Wagner and Chloe Eudaly for their many years of support and encouragement. And thanks to the four people in particular who made this book happen: my writing mentor Lisa Friedman, my agent David McCormick and my editors Jill Schwartzman and Amy Baker.

  My gratitude goes out to everyone else who ever provided me with a couch or a floor to sleep on, let me bum a ride from them, corresponded with me, printed or photocopied (licitly or illicitly) issues of the Dishwasher zine and, in general, endorsed my quest. Without you, I would’ve been just another dope trying to dish in all fifty states.

  About the Author

  PETE JORDAN chroni
cled his adventures as a dishwasher on NPR’s This American Life and in his underground zine Dishwasher, which amassed a following of nearly 10,000 readers. He moved to Amsterdam with his wife in 2002 and began a new life as a bicycle mechanic and writer. This is his first book.

  WWW.DISHWASHERPETE.COM

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  Credits

  Cover design by Gregg Kulick

  An Excerpt from

  In the City of Bikes

  An American Discovers Amsterdam

  By Pete Jordan

  Available April 2013

  CHAPTER 1

  EVEN A MAN FROM AMERICA CAN SEE A FEW THINGS:

  THE ARRIVAL

  “Welkom in Amsterdam,” the flight attendant said upon our landing. From the airport, a 20-minute trip on the train brought me to Central Station. Then, with my duffel bag slung over my left shoulder, I stepped onto the streets of continental Europe for the very first time. Two minutes later, and two blocks away, I was busy gaping at 17th-century buildings with gabled roofs that leaned so severely they seemed likely to spill into the street when suddenly a bike bell rang out: “Brringg! Brringg!”

  Though I clearly heard the bell, I didn’t react to it. Why should I? I was walking on the sidewalk.

  Then, from behind, a bicycle slammed into me. Under the weight of my duffel bag, I stumbled a few steps forward before righting myself. I turned and saw a young brunette cyclist in a short skirt. She looked awfully cute. She also looked mighty pissed—at me. She scowled, then muttered, “Klootzak!” and sped off.