Dishwasher

by Pete Jordan

  “Fuck it,” he often said. “It’s free.”

  This opinion wasn’t shared by the Company Man. Whenever Redneck submitted his grocery list to the Company Man, the latter would randomly veto items he felt were nonessential. Redneck was then left frustrated when the expected food items never arrived.

  To outfox the Company Man, one day Redneck ordered a half-gallon of all nineteen available flavors of ice cream. When the Company Man inspected the grocery order, Redneck reasoned the ice cream would work as a decoy. The Company Man would veto the ice cream and leave the rest of the order intact. I told Redneck his plan was brilliant.

  But we gave the Company Man too much credit. When the groceries arrived the next day, all nineteen cartons of ice cream had survived the veto, but the three sacks of flour Cookie needed for baking hadn’t. I, for one, was thrilled about the Company Man’s screwup, but we didn’t have the freezer space for all that ice cream.

  “Aw, fuck it,” Redneck said. “Throw all that shit away. It’s free anyway.”

  Throw it away? Was he crazy?! Yeah, okay, he was crazy. But still there was no way I was throwing away perfectly good ice cream!

  While Cuz handled the rest of the groceries, I raced to make freezer space for the ice cream before it could melt in the 95-degree heat. I shuffled stuff from the freezer to the fridges, stuff from the fridges to the pantry and yet more stuff from all three places to the Billy Goat. By the time I’d made room for all nineteen cartons, I had shoved so much food into the Billy Goat, the fishies were wiggling with glee.

  My relief was short-lived. In two days, another shipment of groceries would arrive and force out the ice cream. Though I could put away a lot of the stuff, eating nineteen half-gallons of ice cream in two days was out of my league. So I spread the word by listing all available ice cream flavors to everyone who entered the galley. Redneck was pleased with my sudden improvement in “customer relations.” And I was proud that, despite my affinity for the Billy Goat and the fishies, they never got a single drop of ice cream.

  On the morning of the eleventh day, the Company Man stood by the sinks and watched me scrub the breakfast pots.

  “I’m hot on washing dishes,” he said to me, “as long as I have me some gloves.”

  A dishwasher afraid of water, I thought, is like a lifeguard afraid of water: useless. But I said nothing.

  He turned around and watched Redneck bounce around the kitchen in his hyperjerky, talking-to-himself mode.

  “You know why Redneck is goofy like that, don’t you?” the Company Man asked me. “It’s from killing all those Vietnamese.”

  “Cambodians,” I corrected him.

  “What?”

  I turned to him and said, “Redneck says it was Cambodians he killed.”

  “Vietnamese…Cambodians…What’s the difference?” the Company Man said. “They’s all gooks, ain’t they?”

  The sea hadn’t been gazed at in a good thirty seconds, so I turned back to my porthole and the pots.

  “Hey, Redneck, I sure miss the old days,” the Company Man said as he eyed me. “Ninety percent of these pussies on the rigs nowadays couldn’t have hacked it twenty years ago.”

  Pretty macho talk for the ruffian who couldn’t even dish without gloves. Ha!

  The Company Man was the ruler of his own little sea kingdom. He relished his complete authority over everyone on the rig. The rigid pecking order of the rig’s hierarchy made everyone strive toward someday being the bigwig who pushed everyone else around—to be the Company Man. When he entered the galley, guys scurried to make room for him at the counter, Redneck waited on him hand and foot and everyone else humored him.

  But the second the Company Man stepped out of the galley, he was the butt of all the jokes.

  “That pea-brained porker couldn’t run a treadmill, let alone an oil rig!”

  I failed to understand what was so enviable about having a position that a pack of phonies sucked up to. Dishwashing suited me because nice people were nice to me and assholes were assholes to me, yet no one ever sucked up to me. Usually, just as I liked it, I was ignored. Well, most of the time.

  When I arrived in the galley one morning, I found everyone in a somber mood. As the rig hands ate breakfast in silence, Redneck told me that the drilling crew’s night shift had screwed up and broken the drill bit in the well thousands of feet below the sea floor. When the Company Man arrived for breakfast, there was tension in the air. The crew sheepishly slipped out of the galley. The Company Man sat alone, ate alone and seethed. Even the ever-chatty Redneck was scared to utter a word to him.

  An hour later, the Company Man erupted. On the southern platform, he chewed out the rig’s number two man, the Tool Pusher. News of this outburst had just reached the galley when in walked the Tool Pusher himself. Redneck’s attempt to placate the guy by doting on him only backfired. The irritated Tool Pusher complained about the food and questioned Redneck’s sanity.

  “And your stupid fucking galley hands,” he yelled. “Cuz and that bald-ass motherfucker—they’re always tying up the fucking phone!”

  After the Tool Pusher left, Redneck started in on me and Cuz. He claimed we were useless, and that we did nothing but sit around.

  “And the two of you aren’t allowed to use that fuckin’ phone anymore!”

  I looked out my porthole and chuckled. A multibillion-dollar, multinational corporation’s multimillion-dollar oil rig was on the blink and the two who washed the dishes and scrubbed the toilets for minimum wage were bearing the brunt of the backlash.

  I didn’t take Redneck’s scolding personally or even seriously. Useless? I kept the dishes clean. And the nonsense with the telephone? That was Cuz’s department.

  Several of his six girlfriends and fiancées had been hearing rumors of his having other one-and-onlys. To keep up his intricate charade, he’d been on the phone refuting accusations and professing faithfulness. He then began telling five of the women that he had only one day off the rig. When he was back in New Orleans, he’d spend a half or a full day with each of the five women. Then he’d take the sixth woman—the gal he liked the most, a prison guard he met while locked up—to Las Vegas and marry her. Afterwards, he’d rush back to Louisiana and the security of the oil rig—and all the women would be none the wiser.

  Cuz thought his plan was foolproof. I thought otherwise. Cookie thought the scheme was so harebrained, he forbade us from discussing it in his presence.

  “You’ll learn your lesson,” Cookie told Cuz, “when one of those women sticks a knife in you.”

  Cuz and I were both so gung ho to go, we counted down the days together. Three days and a wake-up. Two days and a wake-up. One day and a wake-up. Finally, the last morning, we just had to wake up and jump on the helicopter.

  But first, I had to retrieve my box of goodies from the pantry. For two weeks I’d been collecting a variety of Cajun and Creole bottled hot sauces, spices, mixes, canned foods, etc. to ship ahead to the fishing boat in Alaska. I slipped unnoticed from the galley with my box of illicit stash. But when I entered the bunkroom, there stood Redneck. A couple of awkward seconds passed as I wondered how to explain the box in my hands. Then I noticed all the food items and toiletries (even a roll of toilet paper) that Redneck was in the middle of stuffing into his bags.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “It’s free.”

  He was the boss, so who was I to argue? I crammed my loot into my duffel bag. Failing the Clinton-clone’s honesty exam hadn’t been a fluke after all!

  When I heard the helicopter approach, I grabbed my bag and ran across the platform, only to find a line of rig hands winding down the stairs from the landing pad. It was bad enough not making it onto that first of two flights, but worse was the news brought by the relief steward: he’d seen no relief galley hands at the heliport. If my relief was a no-show—which was highly probable, considering the high turnover rate—then I was expected to remain on the rig until a replacement arrived. That could take the dreaded “day or two
.”

  I’d attempted to survive a two-week stint at sea—and I’d done so admirably. But my sanity had been budgeted to the last second. If I had to stay any longer than originally planned, I’d crack. I had to be on that last flight.

  The wait for the helicopter’s return was agonizing. Cuz paced in the galley while I, through the porthole, searched the heavens for any sign of the helicopter. Finally, a speck crossed the sky.

  “Here comes the bird!” I yelled.

  We ran outside and charged up the stairs. The wind kicked up and the roar grew louder as the helicopter landed. Cuz eyed each of the arriving crew as they passed us on the stairs.

  “None of them’s a galley hand,” he moped. “Guess we should stay and wait for our replacements.”

  He turned to descend the stairs.

  “Are you nuts?!” I shouted.

  Though Cuz was taller and heavier than me, I managed to push him up the stairs. At the top, he finally stopped resisting. We dashed across the roof and boarded the helicopter.

  Terrified that the relief steward would shoot up the stairs and try to prevent Cuz and me from leaving, I strapped myself in and repeated under my breath, “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

  The copter revved up and we lifted off. Overcome with so much relief, I hadn’t realized how tense I’d grown over those last few days until I was in the air. Over my shoulder, I watched our rig shrink until it was one among dozens of dots across the stretch of sea.

  At the heliport, I let the others exit before me. Then I stepped out, knelt down and kissed the concrete. Cuz saw me and laughed.

  “It’s all right, dude,” he said. “I know how it is.”

  Cuz gave me a lift back to New Orleans. When he dropped me off at Cheryl’s house, I told him, “Good luck with all those ladies.”

  “It don’t have nothin’ to do with luck,” he said and then drove off.

  Since Cheryl’s door was locked, I checked the mailbox for the key. Instead, I found my paycheck, paid in full.

  I sat down on the steps. Despite being locked out, I felt pretty good. I’d made Louisiana #20, proved I could survive breaking the Fundamental Rule and now had enough money to reach Alaska. I felt so good that I even toyed with the idea of doing another stint on an oil rig. A few days later, the dispatchers began calling Cheryl’s and Tanio’s houses looking for me again. But by then, I’d already left town.

  Months later, the company sent me a “safety check”—a $100 bonus—because no one died during my tenure on the rig. For the first time ever, I felt an employer truly appreciated my zeal in killing those damn germs.

  20

  Pearl Divers Who Passed Before

  The Alaskan fishing boat plan didn’t pan out. Lara’s fishing season ended prematurely when she suffered a hernia. So instead, we met in New York, where I had an apartment-sitting gig for a few weeks. Later, she went with me to Philadelphia, where I house-sat for another few weeks. Then, in Pittsburgh, after I dropped my dish job in the cafeteria at a women’s college (Pennsylvania: #21), she began inquiring about when I’d be leaving town and where I’d be going to.

  I didn’t know yet—and it frustrated her that I didn’t know. Letters with offers of couches and floors had recently come in from Indiana, North Carolina and Maryland. And now that I’d successfully broken the Fundamental Rule, I was keen to dish on a riverboat or a cruise ship. I’d even picked up an application for a dish position with Amtrak.

  Just as I never knew when the urge to quit a job would strike, I never knew when I’d wake up and think, I gotta leave this town pronto. Or when someone in town would say, “Hey, I’m driving to another state, you wanna tag along?” Or, better yet, when an invitation would come from far out of left field, like the one Lara herself had given me at the Seattle airport when she asked me to fly to Alaska with her.

  So even if I gave Lara a date of departure or named a destination, there was no guarantee that the plan would be carried out. So every time she asked, I continued to answer, “I don’t know yet.”

  Then one day, while she was washing our hosts’ dishes, she happened to inquire one more time. Hearing my standard answer—yet again—made her furious. She took the soapy mason jar she was washing and chucked it at me. It whizzed past my head and shattered against the wall.

  When she dumped me not long afterwards, I was glad to regain the freedom to whimsically make and change my plans. But I was still slow to understand why any woman wouldn’t want to have a relationship with me.

  My dad, on the other hand, had grown to become a Dishwasher Pete fan. He was now telling me tales of how, when asked at family functions about my whereabouts, he took pleasure in saying, “I don’t know. He was in Kentucky or Georgia or somewhere.” Then, turning to my mom, he’d ask, somewhat proudly, “Sally, where’s Pete now?”

  After all my hemming and hawing in Pittsburgh, I ended up next in Madison, Wisconsin. Not only was a couch waiting for me, but there was a job in that town at the very top of my To Do list. Of the thousands of letters I’d received from dish dogs writing to tell me about dish gigs past and present, there were more testimonials about a certain Madison dishpit than about any other place. Though each of the letter-writing alumni had dished there at different periods, they all described the job similarly—a loose atmosphere (boom box blaring, beer drinking, pot smoking) and a tight camaraderie (an ad hoc labor union that the dishwashers were somehow involved with).

  The famous dishroom was part of the immense student union on the University of Wisconsin campus. This pit had become, in my eyes, so mythical that I was surprised when I arrived at the building’s personnel office. Not only were they hiring, but there were heaps of openings for dishwashers.

  After I sat and filled out an application—which included signing up as a member of the renowned Memorial Union Labor Organization—I endured an obligatory interview.

  “Why do you want to work here?” the personnel lady asked.

  I wanted to reply that I wanted to work in America’s most illustrious dishroom while adding Wisconsin (#22) to my scalps.

  Instead, I played it cool and said, “’Cause I need a job.”

  “And what days can you work?”

  “Any day is fine,” I said.

  “Fantastic,” she said. “Because we can use you every day.”

  Three minutes later, I exited the building with my schedule in hand, still surprised, but delighted, to have so easily landed what I’d been led to believe was a choice job.

  The next morning, I descended the stairs from the Lakeview Cafeteria into the basement of the Memorial Union. When I found the kitchen supervisor, she led me to the dishpit, where I expected to be greeted with open arms by my comrades.

  Instead, when we stepped through the doorway, I was greeted only by a wretched stench.

  “You’ll have to excuse that smell,” she said. “The food in some of these pans is starting to rot.”

  It reeked like a puddle of dumpster juice on a 100-degree day.

  Parked throughout the vast dishroom were dozens of wheeled racks that, collectively, held hundreds of soiled hotel pans and sheet pans. Counters and sinks were overrun with dirty pots. Filthy plates were in abundance.

  “Some of this stuff has been sitting here three days waiting to be washed,” she said.

  “Wow!” I let slip.

  Though I’d seen my share of dishpit disasters in the past, this, by far, was the worst. As awestruck as I was to see the mess, even more awesome was knowing that it needed cleaning.

  Then I noticed no comrades were in sight.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “A lot of people quit recently,” she said.

  I couldn’t possibly be the only pearl diver responsible for this catastrophe. I looked all around the dishroom, but the only sign of human life was the back of the kitchen supervisor as she exited the pit.

  On my own, with no clue of where to begin, I held my nose and toured the room. There was a long conveyo
r dishmachine, a pot-washing machine, a silverware-washing machine and various sinks. Much of the floor space was devoted to the dozens of racks which, upon closer inspection, showed that I wasn’t the only visible living organism.

  This was hardly the suds buster’s Valhalla described in the letters I’d received.

  Feeling like I’d been purposefully duped, I expected the letter writers to jump out from behind the racks and yell, “Gotcha!”

  A cook then wheeled in yet another rack of dirty serving pans.

  “Here ya go,” he said, and pushed it over to me.

  A quick survey of this newest arrival revealed a hotel pan that was a quarter full with scrambled eggs and another that contained bacon dregs. Since no one had yet told me what to do, I washed a fork and helped myself to breakfast.

  A minute later, a guy walked in and started loading the conveyor machine. I went over, introduced myself and asked, “So what should I do?”

  “I don’t know,” he said and shrugged.

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought maybe there was some sorta system.”

  “I’ve only been here three days,” he said, “and I don’t know nothin’ ’bout a system.”

  “Well, is there something that maybe needs to be done first?”

  “Do whatever you want, man,” he said. “It don’t matter to me.”

  I walked over to one of the pot sinks and started draining the cold, grungy water. While I was arranging the dozens of pots, another guy entered. He introduced himself as Matt and said the other disher’s name was Joe.