Jaded

Gold decorated kris from northeast Java, Indonesia, late 18th century.

dude.

When i started as a dishwasher, i was trained by an old career dish pit man named Claudio. He'd spent his whole life washing dishes. It allowed him to move to just about any city in the world that he wanted to and get a job without having to deal with complex hiring processes or strict resumé requirements. Which was the main thing he wanted out of a career. I still think about him.

He'd seen a lot of people come through that station who either didn't consider it a real job or thought it was beneath them, on their way to "better" or "more important" things. And, in retrospect, those first two days he was sort of doing the minimum with me that he could do and still respect himself when he told the manager he'd trained me.

But, maybe it was because i was really interested in learning all the positions there were in a restaurant because i knew they were ALL important, or because i was a hard worker, or maybe it was because i tried to have real conversations with him in my broken spanish and did my best to not make him speak any english unless he wanted to, but after a couple days there was a big shift in the way he and i worked together, and he started to really teach me.

That place ran the dish pit with one dishwasher, so when he was done training me I was going to be doing the job on my own.

The thing that stuck with me the most, for the rest of my restaurant career, was this... and it wasn't just the actual things he was saying, but a completely new way of looking at what i was doing within the context of how the restaurant ran. I came in for my 3rd day and he said

"When you work alone, you want to go home by midnight?"

we clocked on at 3:30 and took a half hour lunch break and usually skipped our tens, so, yeah i absolutely did want to get off work by midnight

Then, even tho i already knew where most of everything was by that time, he took me around and showed me all the dishes, cups, pots and pans, spatulas, silverware, had me look at all of it. Then he told me to remember that almost every one of the dishes I was looking at would be used more than once by the end of our shift- we were clocking on to wash the entire building full of dishes multiple times.

Then he led me back over to the industrial dishwasher most restaurants have, which looks like this:

and then this 60 year old career dishwasher from Mexico City said the thing that changed how I looked at restaurant jobs forever

"This machine takes two full minutes to run a cycle. We are on the clock for 8 hours. That means we have a maximum of 240 times we can run this machine. If you want to wash all those dishes, clean your station, mop, and clock off by midnight? This machine has to be on and running every second of the shift.

If you don't have a full load of dishes collected, scraped, rinsed, stacked, and ready to go into the dishwasher the second it's done every single time? You can't do it. If, over the course of 8 hours, you let this machine lay idle for just one minute in between finishing each load and being turned on again? Instead of 240 loads, you'll do 160 loads.

[like, literally, he had done this math, he had these exact figures]

160 loads instead of 240 loads means you are doing 20 loads in an hour instead of 30 loads. That means the dishes are going to pile up. The cooks will run out of pots and pans and will have to stop and wait for you, the servers will run out of plates and cups and have to stop and wait for you, and your night is going to SUCK. Every part of how this restaurant works can grind to a halt because of that idle minute between dish loads, and if it does you'll have an entire building of people in a hurry and all waiting on you.

And it means you're going to be here until 2 am doing the 200+ loads of dishes this restaurant goes through every night.

For this to work, you MUST have this dishwasher on and running every minute of the shift. As soon as you turn it on you have two minutes to have the next load ready. See these large items i put to the side down here? One or two of them takes up all the space in the machine. I keep them here so that if the machine finishes and shuts off before i'm ready for it i can stick one of these in there and turn it on again immediately. You have to think like that to do this job without stress."

The way he was looking at how the whole restaurant ran, the way he was looking at how he'd spend each minute of the entire shift, the way he broke down what the physical limits were and how to max them out so he could do his job and go home on time without stressing out... The way this 60 year old guy, who had never had professional ambitions beyond being a dishwasher, was still such a competent and brilliant expert in his field.

It was all such an important lesson, and one that stayed with me through every position i went on to work in restaurants, dish pit, busser, server, cook, all the way up through manager before I finally got out of my restaurant career

Claudio never wanted to be anything but a dishwasher who didn't stay any later than he had to.

But he knew how that restaurant ran better than most of the other people in it. I never had a chance to truly thank him for the specific lesson he taught me, because while it had an immediate impact, I didn't really understand how valuable a lesson it was until much later.

The Raven Lord

go to About:config find media.mediasource.enabled and toggle it to false find media.cache_readahead_limit and change it to 9999 find media.cache_resume_threshold and change it to 9999

additionally if you'd prefer mp4 to webm

also in about:config, find: media.encoder.webm.enabled media.mediasource.webm.audio.enabled media.mediasource.webm.enabled media.webm.enabled and toggle them all to false

note! this will limit video to 1080p

a close up to just... light shining through those waves, makes me feel faint with exhilaration every time

"Do you?" She furrows her eyebrows at the way you asked the question. "Wha…"

"I haven't seen you with a boyfriend."

"I showed up with him, he's-"

"Outside? He's been outside a lot tonight, huh? I've had my eye on you for two hours, and not once have you been on his arm. You keep checking your phone like you're waiting on something, but I don't think he's coming, baby."

Her confidence falters a note. "He's just, he went out for a smoke, he said he was coming back in…" You raise your eyebrows to reinforce your previous assertion. She falters under it, and reaches over with one hand to grasp her other forearm.

You sidle a little closer to her, bumping your arm into the fridge she's been standing next to, looking lonely. "I noticed you've been checking her out all night." You gesture at a redhead across the room wearing slightly too much lipstick. That one's been running her mouth to the little woman next to her on the couch ever since the party's host disbanded the half-assed attempt at icebreaker games, and the yearning on your conversational partner's face was so loud that you immediately knew she was missing something important in her life.

She blushes and turns away. "No, I, well, I just think she's really beautiful."

"You want me to get her number for you?" You don't want to get that number for her, but you know this pretty little thing is going to flinch at the notion of actually getting what she wants.

She plays right into your hands. "She's busy, and she's talking to that girl, and besides, she wouldn't want m-…" She tucks her lips between her teeth to smother the rest of the sentence, and she drifts to staring down between her feet.

You take a step forward and a bold step in the conversation, getting close enough to tuck a finger under her chin and lift to force eye contact. You murmur "She wouldn't want you? Why wouldn't she want you? Girl, you're a catch. You didn't come here all dressed up to look at the floor, did you?"

Her eyes get a few drops more watery, and she almost pulls away from your touch, but you take a second finger and run it under her chin again, and she almost puckers as she leans into the touch. A thirst she doesn't seem willing to admit touches her lips for a moment, but then she tries to protest "I came with my boyfriend-"

"Yeah yeah, your boyfriend. But I don't see him here now, with you. You're right here, with me, and I can see what he's missing."

You can feel the desperation in the way she leans forward. "What he's missing? What do you mean?"

"He showed up to the party with the most beautiful girl here, and somehow he's gotten fixated on the reflection in his truck's bumper outside instead of keeping an eye on his woman. I think he should be taught a lesson."

She pulls back a little past your outstretched fingers, but you don't cede distance, and she step back into the ample space available. "What? What are you saying? A lesson? He's just outside, he just, he was just getting a cigarette from her, he's coming back soon…"

"Oh, so he was talking to some girl? And somehow he forgot about you?"

She's on the verge of tears. "I, well, she was…" Her voice drops to a whisper, right about to break. "She's trans too, so…"

A cord unzips around your throat, the friction painful as you see this poor girl push herself aside to make way in her relationship for someone else just because they share a demographic with her. You step further forward and cup her jaw, staring deep into her eyes. "Oh, sweetie, do you think that's why he's with you?"

With an impressive degree of fortitude she manages to return your gaze, and you can see something vulnerable inside her unfurling under your attention. She murmurs out "He just said I'm his type, that he has a thing for tgirls-"

You cut her off with gentle firmness. "Baby girl, 'tgirl' is something that you get to say, not him. Do you like being called that?"

Her cheeks go red and she shakes her head in your hand a little. "I just want to be a woman, but-"

"No 'but' anything. You are a woman, and you deserve to be called that. What do you want to be called? How does gorgeous sound?"

Her lips part, and you can feel her breathing coming heavier. You adjust your grip to hold her chin like a chalice filled with angelic ambrosia, and you continue "Delightful? Sweet thing?" That gets a shiver out of her, and you can tell that if you find just the right phrase, you might get a moan out of her.

The air etches with the truest sentence of the evening: "Are you my little girl?"

You get the moan you were aiming for, and in the breathless moments she fails to respond you take another step forward and wrap your arms around her waist. You can see stars light in her eyes at your proximity, and she bites her lip for a moment before she remembers the chastity she's so foolishly trying to withhold. "Wait, no, I, I have a boyfriend, I'm lucky to have him, I won't cheat-"