you missed a spot

Dishwashing could be like an ignition into the work force. A hazing if you will. There was the usual routine coming in start the shift: Clean up the entire kitchen, Bring in the first load filled with coffee mugs and half eaten salads, run them through the steam box (not to be confused with the hot box) which comprised of steamed water that would jet blast away any possibilities of germs even thinking about reproducing. Once all that was said and done you would wait. I still to this day have in a way post-traumatic stress from the sound of the glasses clinking and the plastic wheels on the hard floor getting louder and moving into the kitchen. Only to find diseased scraps and unknown creams all left in my custody. It was all up to me to dispose of the left-overs. Saturday mornings were bitter sweet for me. I shared the same work place with the bakery lady. She had me working twice as fast (Saturday mornings in a family restaurant). She would throw in mixers, sheets, pans, bowls on top of the ongoing demands of clean dishes and silverware from multiple servers. The cooks and food prep would join in on the requests with their hardware too. That job has branded me for life. Underneath the sink contained a metal box which almost all of the restaurant workforce already knows whats up, but anyways its called the. . . . excuse me for a moment while I fight to not gag over the keyboard. . .the grease trap. One time it clogged and I out of courtesy will just leave it at that. Nothing else in this world phases me in comparison to that box of horror. For a high school kid making a little over 6 bucks it wasn't too bad. Oh wait one more story, so the cook was known to be a loose cannon (which he was) and once he asked if we had any salad left from the food prep containers, I said that I didn't know. I went back to cleaning and washing dishes when all of a sudden I see this empty container fly through the back and collide with the wall shattering the hard plastic. I guess he really needed salad.