Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazee Cat Lady
I worked in a couple of them too when younger....it's why I much prefer to cook my own food now,
and rarely eat out.
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I was around 16 or so and the only reason I took the job was because it was the only one I could get so I could get off school half day.
I was supposed to be just a dishwasher but they had me cleaning windows, peeling onions, garlic and grinding tomatoes, cleaning restrooms and a lot of other stuff. I had to wear the paper hat and white apron, the hat had been wet so many times it would no longer fasten and hung down the side of my head. The apron was always covered with tomato juice and spaghetti sauce from helping the cook, it looked like I just butchered somebody.
Because of my appearance I was seldom permitted to enter the dining room when people were in there eating. Only when someone barfed or spilled something they would send me in with a bucket and rag mop, that kind of work was beneath the busboys and waiters. I would push that shedding mop around the floor and under tables while customers would lift their feet when I asked " excuse me " and that mop would leave it's strings all around the table legs, looked like dead worms.
One day one of the waiters was back in the kitchen and took some ice cubes from the icebox, rolled them into a napkin and started beating them on the floor and stomping on them. The cook asked what he was doing and he said, " that SOB out there has to have crushed ice."
Another time the cook was stirring a pot of sauce and the ashes from his cigarette was falling in the pot. The owner came back and saw him and told him to put his cigarette out or smoke out back. He put the cigarette out by dipping it in the pot he was boiling noodles in.
We weren't allowed to go for lunch, we had to stay in the kitchen and eat whatever the cook was making, usually lasagna which I can't stand, so I usually didn't eat at all. Some of those days just got too much for me from not eating and I noticed a cardboard barrel in the freezer filled with those long loaves of French bread so I would tear off little pieces from them when I walked by and scarf them down before anyone saw me.
One day the cook went in there and noticed all the loaves. He told the owner that rats or something has been gnawing on the bread. They couldn't figure out how rats were getting in the freezer. The next day an exterminator was in the kitchen placing traps around and he asked me if I ever saw any rats back there. When he asked me that I had just caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and I came close to saying, " Just one."
I remember the owner telling us dishwashers to save any items such as those little squares of butter and other stuff that came back on the trays untouched and put them in the icebox. I though I was cheap.
I got my brother a job there working with me and when I went out back to empty a trash can a waiter who was smoking a cigarette said, " You and your brother look like convicts."
I worked there almost a year, my brother just 2 days.
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Same here.
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