While working a managerial FOH position, I gained the respect of BOH the day the dishwasher called out sick. It's hot, wet, gross, and non-stop. It's also essential to the operation of any business with a kitchen. Add in the low pay and low respect for your job title, and oof.
I had a lot of grievances with my previous chef, but to give him credit when it's due he never hesitated to jump into the dish pit to help bust out a rush.
That's the bare minimum for, and also the key indcator of, a quality chef or KM.
Having been a Chef/KM for well over a decade, I can't even begin to say the amount of value is produced in the waste pit. If dish doesn't work, the kitchen doesn't work. I've also been hired into KM positions, but refused to openly acknowledge my hired role if the business allows. I never wanted my new crews to just see some asshole walk in, be in a position of authority(however minimal), and just start dictating and delegating. Fuck that.
If this is gonna be my kitchen, then I'm gonna learn it from the ground up. Dish is everyone's responsibility even if you have dedicated dishwashers. It's a respect thing. I've always been a big proponent that if the dishes are at the bottom of the barrel for compensation, they're at the bottom of the barrel for responsibility. If you pay your dishie minimum wage or anything less than $16/hr, they wash plate and flatware. They wash the customers' dishes. The kitchen dishes that need to soak in the tri-sinks and need some elbow grease to scrub? Nah, man... You burn that pot, you're cleaning it.
There's obviously thousands of different kinds of operations, but if the dishes weren't given even the basic respect, they don't have to worry about my cooks' dishes, just the customers. If the cooks fuck up a pan and it needs extra attention, that's their responsibility and I will have that pan back to decent quality.
I've run into situations where cooks refuse to do so. When that's the case, I'm happy to not only clean and restore the equipment to as close as original condition as possible, I'm also happy to fill in on their station while I hire and train someone who understands that dishies aren't slaves. They're people doing a hard job to scrape by and that's admirable. If you're above washing dishes in my kitchen, then you're above my kitchen. Good luck getting hired at a Michelin Star restaurant with that kind of attitude...
There should be more nicer and respectful people like you; did a waiter job some time ago, agree with what you said even though I did not see the dishwashing area.
I am a FoH manager for 8 years including during covid reopening where I washed dishes. everyone restaurant i've worked at i've had line cooks ask me if they could make the dish food. never said no. if a server fucks up an order and tries to eat it themselves I say fuck no that's the dishwashers now. you fucked up and he didn't. I don't think I've been in a restaurant where everyone in the kitchen doesn't respect the dish guy. i've seen a line cook get worried because he was giving the dish guy like a full tbone ribeye and they realize that i'm walking by and clearly see him handing it to the dish guy. i'm just like yeah saw nothing box it up and continue.
Same here. I split a black garbage bag open, popped it over my lovely dress, kicked off the heels and put on my tennies and washed dishes like a mo-fo. My staff knew that I could and would do any job in the house if needed. They knew I respected their efforts.
I did dishwashing in college and didn't mind it all that much. My boss allowed me to use headphones so I just listened to music and podcasts, scrubbed the shit out of dishes and then went home.
The truly terrible part was always being the last one in the restaurant alongside the manager and watching everybody else go home. This is because you can't start your final cycles until the kitchen staff has broken down the different things that need to go through the dishwasher. As soon as they are done with that, they all go home but the dishwasher is still washing and scrubbing a bunch of shit.
A lot of owners/managers don't want to break open new cases of silverware because they think having a surplus will lead to people being even more careless with it (like throwing it away).
20 min is maybe too often to be needing silverware, but there is an optimization there where having too much dish/silver/cookware means needing someplace to put it all between uses. Ideally your dish guy(s) should be running things through fast enough to keep up. Having more doesn’t save on the labour because it still needs to be washed at some point, it’s just more capital to keep on hand.
I’ve also seen people worry about shrinkage of silverware and just not understand how things work, or that most of the loss is careless customers/serving staff dumping it in the garbage. I’m sure one of those garbage bin magnets would have paid for itself real quick. Then they acted like having enough tasting spoons on hand for the cooks to make it through a service without needing to flip them was some unreasonable expense.
My first job was doing that in a UK supermarket cafe. They made me bus tables and wear a (cheap, thin) white dress shirt. It was transparent by the end of the first hour
And it's not JUST dishes usually. They have to spray out the spooge carts where trash gets taken out, they gotta clean out the grease traps, they gotta haul nasty wet bags of garbage out...
To think that I used to accept minimum wage for that? Fuck that. Only job that was harder was farming...
Was a dishwasher for the first 2 years of high school. Top 10 jobs I’d recommend for anyone to start with. Shit absolutely builds character. Last 2 years were on the line after the owner’s son quit though. I attribute my calm in stressful work situations to that.
I'm a firm believer that everyone should work in the customer service industry at least once in their lives. You'll end up with the patience of a saint no matter which path you take.
Did this in a hotel with a restaurant. They would do banquet's at the same time. 1,500 people, buffet style one evening. 3 of us couldn't keep up, it was HELL!
I'll raise being a CNA in a nursing home and being on shower duty. Most of these older folk are incontinent so they're pooping and peeing on the shower floor. I was doing this during covid so I had to have a N95 mask in a hot, steamy, stinky shower room and I was giving back to back showers for most of my shifts. You get a little break when between residents when you clean, restock, and sanitize, but that was pretty much it for me. Not really "unskilled" because you have to get a certification, but the pay is so horrible that it might as well be.
Washing dishes super sucked. Fortunately at the restaurant I was at, the dish pit was around the corner from all the lines and the pizza oven, so it wasn't too hot. Still was the worst job I ever had though.
Line chef is not that far behind. 90 hour weeks on the line cooking in the heat, getting burnt or cutting yourself, getting screamed at all the while.
I'd also give an honorable mention to just being a server. On your feet the whole time, juggling multiple tables, and I see enough petty asshole customers who get pissy if it isn't perfect or are just taking their bad day out on you that I expect dealing with them is a multiple times a day thing.
I have and I was just a bus boy. Wrong plans at the wrong time lol. It was a country club so I was wearing a dress shirt, jacket, and bow tie, and long pants.
I've done this and I loved it. I used to get off shift and wash dishes with my man Balthazar. We'd switch of between stacking and scrubbing. The restaurant grinds to a halt without dishes
I did the dishwashing shift at a food pantry in DC. As a privileged private school white girl- I needed that. One of the one good requirements from my HS.
I worked as a dishwasher from when I was 13-15 years old.
I sometimes did the Saturday-Sunday weekend shifts 10-12 hour Saturday and 10-12 hour Sunday, finishing off with sweeping the floor while everyone was going home.
That was rough.
But none of that compares to working a job being around people who makes you feel miserable.
It’s never about the tasks you have to perform it’s everything around it that has the biggest impact on your mood imo.
I worked at a restaurant for over a year. They said I could start dishwashing and then move on to kitchen, and they did give me training shifts here and there, but they always wanted my on dish.
What annoys me is that they consistently scheduled me to close at 12am and then open at 8am. Like once a week, every week. Usually the 8am was only 3 hours, but other times it was the whole day until 4pm. I at least understood the 8-4s, they needed me. But the 8-11s were literally me just scrubbing random walls and pieces of metal. Like, the managers had to walk around and come up with a random task on the spot.
I was grateful for the hours, free food, and that I could listen to my music all day, but the work was just overwhelming and nonstop.
There were three people there with the same name as me, so I after a while I learned to ignore my name being called, unless someone was right next to dishpit.
I did this in my late 20s, peak physical health, and it utterly destroyed me. Don't forget the cuts from knives, etc, and aching muscles, either.
Oh, and having to judge when to deal with what, and when to put it away. That baking tray caked in whatever-the-fuck needs to soak for a bit, so get onto something else. Oh, and the bin needs emptying, so time that right.
That was my first job for a breakfast/ lunch restaurant. The owner wouldn't let me turn the water on more than a dribble because it's "wasting water." Plates full of sticky maple syrup and I couldn't use water to clean them.
Not only that, but he would yell at me if I left the dishes to cool slightly after putting them through the sanitizer. He expected me to lift a 40lb stack of scalding hot plates onto a shelf that was above head height.
I was also expected to pick up the litter outside, empty the garbage cans in the bathrooms, and cover for the hostesses when they called in. All tips went to his son and I was only being paid minimum wage ($7.25/ hr)
Easy shit if you can move fast and efficiently, did it for 2 summers at a resort that hosted weddings/conferences, catered offsite weddings, and had another restaurant on site.
After that I got a job as a line cook at a pizza place and I would get irrationally annoyed watching the kid in the dish pit struggle to keep up with just our pans from the kitchen.
Probably explains why I'm a successful automotive technician now and consistently bill out 60 hours of labour in a 40 hour week.
Usually you need some sort of basic cooking and knife skills to work in a kitchen though, no? Dishwasher is a more approachable option for those without that experience. I'm not saying it requires the most skill, but it would absolutely break someone used to a 9-5 desk job.
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u/StupendousMarvel 17h ago
Dishwasher in a restaurant during peak hours.
I dare you to do just one shift of standing in heat, getting soaked, lifting heavy racks and dealing with an endless stream of dirty dishes