Like most cooks I started out as a dishwasher, the more accurate term being the dish bitch. It was the lowest of the jobs on the ladder of respect in the restaurant world with the lowest pay.
While one could wallow in their own self-pity working as the dishwasher there were perks to be found. The possibility of quitting scared those that drove the dishwasher to the final act of screaming “fuck you” and walking out the door, knowing that the person responsible would be the one to finish the dishes for the rest of the night. If the place was busy, the rest of the staff would blame that person for the late meals, dirty utensils, and constantly running out of glasses for drinks. The dishwasher could walk away free and clear anytime they desired and nobody would give a shit except for the poor bastard in the dish room.
Another perk of the trade was the ability to have an “oops” on the job. I quickly learned in my first days that steaming hot glasses will explode when they are filled with ice cold beverages. This happened once when I put a fresh tray on top of the stack and a waitress went to fill an order with glass exploding and almost cutting her hand. That was a mistake. Later when a different waitress started giving me shit about plates and trays running out in the kitchen during a particularly busy shift, I made it a point to put a fresh tray of steaming hot glasses next to the soda dispenser and waited. A few seconds later there was the cracking sound of glass hitting the floor and the huff and puff of the same waitress that didn’t keep her mouth shut. I don’t know how I timed it right but I did and the feeling of satisfaction fed my desire to keep working the rest of the night in peace. Nobody said a god damn thing.
Being stuck back in the bowels of the restaurant gave a level of privacy that allowed one to drift away into la la land and listen to whatever music you wanted. There were managers who tried to keep with the manual and only allow radio approved music. However, when the restaurant is located at the basement level of a mall few radio stations come through and those that do tend to be of the pop, country, and Christian variety. Nothing that a cynical young man in his twenties wants to hear. We had CDs and whatever you picked better be long playing and something you want to hear for a few hours on repeat. To take a CD out and change it meant that steam would cover the disc or the lens and you were fucked until it dried off. The same manager was also older and hard of hearing. She would later ask you about songs she heard you listening to and changing the lyrics to something out of a Ron Jeremy porno. Those were the times you could bust out laughing in the office and pull the lyrics sheet out for her to read for herself. “that is not what I heard.”
To stay a couple of weeks as a dishwasher was to pass the grade into a new world. This was usually due to someone calling in sick or not passing the piss test with their parole officer. I still remember that afternoon when the manager said they had someone else to cover the dish room and that I was taking over as the secondary cook in the kitchen. It scared the shit out of me.
“But what about the shit left over from last night?” I asked already having the task planned out in my head.
“Don’t worry about it. Jeremy will do it, he fucking owes me. Get your ass in the kitchen and start learning.”
And like that I was thrown in the flames of the fire and had the stress induced experience of on the job training. I have to admit that after that it became my preferred method of learning and to this day nobody in a respectable field believes that it is an acceptable way to train someone. This is perhaps why I still have a job that involves cleaning toilets.
There was one important thing that we had not gone over before I started cooking. There was the question of a nickname. There was Nate Dawg, because his name was Nate and well, I don’t know the rest of the reason, maybe because he liked rap music and lived in a trailer park. There was Junior and he was a Junior. Opie, because in his mid-twenties he looked like the kid from the Andy Griffith Show. Jeremy was still Jeremy because to call him anything else would cause a world of confusion with a guy who had tried every drug under the sun and wasn’t 18 yet. Then there was me.
“So, what do you do?” I was asked with no answers giving the crew anything to work with.
“what are the initials of your name?”
And as I said the letters I knew before the second one was finished coming out of my mouth what my nickname was going to be. “Mother fucker!”
That was how I became the motherfucker, long before some shitty marvel comic turned it into a villain for a lame superhero. This led to confusion for the rest of the time that I worked there leaving the new staff wondering what the hell was going on.
“Mother Fucker, get me those fries.” I would turn around and bump into the new guy wondering what the hell they were doing.
“I thought they were talking to me,” they would say as I took the basket from them.
“I’m the Mother Fucker, mother fucker.” The fries would fall onto a tray and I would point at the prepping table. “get back to those tomatoes.”
Being the mother fucker had its perks as well. When the wait staff became upset with you it didn’t matter what they said or called you, after being called mother fucker all day you could brush off any insult.
“If that tray isn’t ready in two minutes, I’m going to lose my tip asshole.”
This is what wait staff didn’t understand. I received the same pay regardless of what they were tipped. It cost me nothing to have a meal go out late. I was more concerned about it being good because I didn’t want the manager coming back saying there was a complaint. The idea that a waitress or waiter could threaten us was a joke, but at the same time it was good to stay on good footing with these people because afterwork these were the people you would party with, smoke pot with on breaks, and if you were lucky/ unlucky sleep with.
It wasn’t uncommon for the waitresses to flirt with the kitchen staff in order to get what they wanted which was their orders served first so that they would have better tips at the end of the night. Nobody likes cold shitty food and although it isn’t the server’s fault that is the person who gets shit on at the end of the day. At first, the new cooks don’t know any better so when the waitress starts coming behind the counter with an extra button undone, they tend to get what they want for a while. Once it is figured out that there is no connection there and you are simply making her more money with nothing in it for you, they simply move onto the next new guy in the kitchen, and the act goes on and on.
Being a male server has to be one of the least rewarding jobs a man can have. The notion of a man flirting his way to a tip, especially in this day and age, would more likely get him fired before he would make a few extra bucks. In our society, the notion of a man working as a server means that either he has no ambition, he’s unintelligent, grew up poor, his mom and dad own the place, or he has a felony. For a man to willingly go into this profession of his own accord means he has no idea what the hell he is in for. The tips are low, the pay even lower, and if you are lucky you will leave after the first couple of weeks. If you are hoping to work your way up to manager, think again. That job is already reserved for some snot nose asshole who just graduated from college and has never worked a day in his life. They have no experience in the profession and can’t function in a workplace setting like an adult. This is who your new boss will be.
As for the waitresses, these girls are the ones who knew they had good looks but had the morals to stay out of stripping. They do all the same tricks. They can be the nice girl that you want to bring home to mom or give you the hopes of one day “getting with that” which sometimes brings the guys back a few times leaving large tips and empty wallets by the time they figure out the act. I would like to think of it as the “lap dance with a meal.”
One of the girls thought she had the act down and was excited when a Hooters opened up down the street, sending her to the office to put in her two-week notice. Lindsey was blessed with DD breasts and a flirty personality that often got her $20 cash tips with a phone number on them which she never called and often spent on drinks after work. A few weeks after she left, I remember her walking back into Olga’s and asking for her old job back. The staff at Hooters didn’t like the fact that she was endowed with what the name stood for, and while the flat chested high school girls served the men in the restaurant Lindsey was stuck in the kitchen filling orders and never seen. She watched as her money-making opportunity disappeared before her eyes and knew she had to get out of there. Hooters, the place that promised a fortune to a girl with her… talents, had lied to her. The one time I went there I noticed that the name was a lie and wondered where all the “Lindseys” were.
To be continued…