This installment comes grossly out of order as this job was, in fact, the job I had while I wrote the three previous entries in the Entry Level Loser series. In fact, it was the job I had right up until the day I wrote this entry. Follow me on a journey of hilarity.

For a variety of reasons I had been out of work for a while and, needing some manner of cash flow to supplement my writing income just in case I wasn’t able to continue to pay my bills (contrary to popular belief I am not disgustingly wealthy and I do not wipe my ass on gold plated hundred dollar bills like Adam Brown does. The rest of us writers on scenicanemia are poor shmucks. I wipe my ass with good old two ply, while Grady uses one ply and Glenn uses his hand). So figuring I could do a job I had mastered way back when I worked at Best Value, I applied to be a dishwasher at the Idlewyld Inn. I had also washed dishes at another job that I’m sure will make it into this series eventually.

Anyway, to provide some background, the Idlewyld Inn is an actual, million year old house in my town that someone decided would be fun to turn into a restaurant/inn despite it being laid out like a stodgy mansion in the old money part of town. The clientele are generally the pre-funeral home set; elderly ladies who go out for tea on Sundays to enjoy scones and Red Rose on the patio and sometimes the sorts of people who most likely listen to opera CDs while they drive to work in their green Lexus because the black one is in the shop. People who would look at my tattoos funny whenever I managed to escape the kitchen.

The most noticeable thing about working in the kitchen at this place is the fact it has the same swampy ass atmosphere you’d expect to find if you were hunting for Aztec gold in the midst of some god forsaken rain forest that has never been mapped. It was easily 36 degrees Celsius every day with pretty much 100% humidity. For you Americans, that’s probably over 100 degrees or some shit, I dunno. Fahrenheit is ridiculous. As a special bonus, I was outfitted with a mostly polyester shirt to help me keep in as much of that heat as possible. Nothing smells quite as luxurious as me in high humidity covered in tepid water, sweat and the remains of a few dozen greasy meals.

If you’ve ever worked as a dishwasher before, you’re still not adequately equipped to picture this place. The kitchen was originally the kitchen for a house, you see, thus it was not sized to appropriately manage an entire business. Sure it had been renovated to have a commercial dishwasher and a small kitchen line, but the fact was the dishwasher was the smaller commercial model you’re likely to ever see and it had room on either side for one rack of dishes and no more. There were two small sinks to the right and a space for servers to pile more shit. The entire dish pit was about the size of a handicapped bathroom stall and you know how I feel about handicapped bathroom stalls.

Due to size constraints, not all of the dishes actually fit in the kitchen, but lucky us we had a second kitchen downstairs, which is also where most of the fridge and freezer space was. So every so often, as you cleaned dishes, you’d have to grab a handful and go down the hall, go down the stairs and put stuff away in the other kitchen, then go back upstairs and do it again.

I was trained by two different dishwashers on two different days. One of the dishwashers was leaving and I was his replacement, the other was a new hire who actually quit about three days ago. Why do you care who trained me? Good question. Here’s my fun answer. Earlier this very week I got written up. Disciplined, if you will, for my lackluster performance at work a week or so ago. It seems that I fucked up 3 separate things in one night. Gads! Not only did I neglect to tell the wait staff that I was leaving, I also didn’t do a full shutdown and there were still people in the dining room which meant the pit was full of dishes the next morning. Clearly I am an awful employee. Except that never once in the entire time I worked there did I ever tell the wait staff that I was leaving as no one ever once mentioned I had to, and I never performed a full shut down because no one ever showed me that or told me I had to. As for the dishes, I was told about those. Told that I could leave them for the next day if the kitchen was closing up and I was done everything else. Two people told me that, in fact. So naturally I got written up for that.

Never since being fired for not being liked have I heard such an awesome reason for giving someone shit at work. “Ian, you know this stuff no one ever told you to do? You really should have made sure someone told you to do it. You fail as both a psychic and a dishwasher. You’re being written up at work but in the grander scheme, God is probably disgusted by you. I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 5,000 and you have no idea what it is. You suck. I hope you shit yourself in your sleep tonight.”

I accepted that write up with a smile because stuff like that makes me laugh. Also because I already hated this job and had been interviewing for other jobs for the previous 2 weeks. Aside from the procedural and infrastructural douche baggery of this place, there was a weird vibe from pretty much every person who worked there. One chef, who readily admitted to having not washed his hair with any manner of soap for the past eight years making him look something like a yak and who I once watched pull a piece of red pepper out of the garbage and put it back in the fridge had an awesome tendency to almost never speak directly to me. Except for the one day when I walked behind him to put pans away and he turned, bumped into me because I neglected to shout “behind!” as I assumed when he was looking at me coming towards him a moment previously he had actually seen me, and then freaked out, arms raised high above his head as though the police were cracking down on all greasy haired cooks demanding that I let him know where I am at all times in the future.

The servers ran a nice range of personality types. Two would actually speak directly to me and engage in idle small talk for brief moments if nothing else was going on and even empty glasses of liquid and scrape plates before giving them to me. Others would lob silverware from across the room into the tray so that grungy, clotted and yellow water would continue to splash on me through the day, which contributed to my unique perfume.

From day to day I would be presented with some unique, new kitchen appliance or device I had never seen before so each washing became an adventure of trying to find someone who knew where I was supposed to put it after it was cleaned since I had never seen it before. If not the upstairs kitchen there was also a chance it went into some cupboards in a hall downstairs or the cupboards in the entrance to the downstairs kitchen, or a set of mystery drawers. It was like a reverse scavenger hunt of lameness.

On my most recent shift, the day of this writing, I spent seven fun-filled hours cleaning up on what was a fairly busy day. I had a feeling something was up when a cook asked me if I was hungry and prepared a burger for me as, in the entire time I had worked there, only one other time had anyone ever given me a meal and I think it was leftover from a wedding service. It occurs to me only now that cooks made themselves meals fairly regularly and it was entirely possible I was allowed to eat as well, it’s just no one ever offered. This isn’t surprising though as I was once scolded for helping myself to ice in the bar area, as I was apparently the greasy kitchen hunchback that company wasn’t allowed to see or some such. You know how people in restaurants are once they see what the dishwashers look like. It’s all panic defecations, running for exits and fainting.

I enjoyed my meal out back under a very blue sky with some fast moving clouds and bright sun. I had only taken a break once before at this job, the day after I was written up, as I felt like I may as well start doing everything to the letter if I’m getting bitched out for doing shit I never even knew was my responsibility. So I sat in the back with a burger and watched clouds and got wistful for the freedom of birds and longed for the wind in my hair. And kids, let me tell you, I got the wind in my hair when my boss fired me.

I was told about an hour and a half before the end of the shift she wanted to “have a sit down” with me, which is exactly what happened before I was written up. Only I hadn’t done anything since then so there was no way I could have been written up again. And surely not fired. I mean, I hadn’t done anything. I had literally worked one shift since then, and my boss watched me like a hawk and made sure I knew all the stuff I had overlooked. What could this sit down mean? It means I’m fired. Fired fired fired. I felt it. And the worst part was it was pre-emptive. I had 3 interviews for a new job and was expecting a call back midweek. I was going to quit on Wednesday but this was Sunday. How dare they fuck me before I fuck them. I was even pondering quitting today based entirely around whether or not I had clean laundry to wear to work. But I did laundry and lost my excuse and now look what happened. Fired.

At the very end of my shift, after I had swept and polished every little thing I go into this room, sit down and…I’m going to have to let you go. My reaction? “Oh yeah?” Her response? “Yeah.”

It seems that yesterday I had swept downstairs but, since there is no dust pan down there it slipped my mind when I came back upstairs so, rather than dumping that small amount of floor waste into the can I had left it in a pile next to the garbage. So I got fired. This was the actual reason given, and she had discussed it with several other people whose names I did not recognize but must have been bosses of mine also that I never met or some such. . I assume my inability to know things no one ever told me also factored in, but this horrible oversight was the final nail in my coffin. Then, in a curious twist of supervisory disorientation, I was asked if this was OK. Like, if it was OK that I was fired. I asked if there was a choice other than it being OK, to which I was told no. Then she said “see ya later” because that’s what people say when they have no idea what else to say to someone they just shit canned. I managed to not laugh too much but give her an encouraging smile as she seemed to be taking it much harder than me. I then clocked out, left my stinking work shirt and apron in the staff room and came home to write this.

Where do I go from here? Who’s to say, but another job is in the bag for me. Fear not though, as we still have a sizable backlog to fill in of other jobs I have done in the past. I like to think I have an indomitable spirit when it comes to work, and if nothing else, it’s always good to have more to write about. Plus I can tell people not to eat there since one of the cooks hasn’t washed his hair in eight fuckin’ years.