I feel I should clarify a few things before I dive in. I am not disparaging my boss, my coworkers, or my place of business. Rather, this is a glimpse into the consequences of indoctrination and work ethic that I experienced firsthand.
So, I work at a Mexican restaurant, washing dishes in the back. It's an inelegant gig, but someone has to do it. Or rather, some two. Technically, it's a two-person job, but if the day is slow enough it can be done just fine with one. The boss man organized a Crimbo potluck on a Sunday, the same Sunday that Finals Week began at my college, so I was – admittedly – a bit on edge all night long. We were instructed to bring something, basically out of our own pockets. I didn't mind; it was my entrance fee, I felt.
So I come in that night ready to work, at least until I see the cart that we use to bring dishes back piled up so high with dinner plates, it seemed like it went from my waist to my eyes. And that was just the dinner plates; there are side dish plates, chip dip bowls, chip baskets… A lot of crap, basically.
Thankfully, I wasn't alone.
… For about the first 45 minutes.
I'm not saying that what came of this was my coworker's fault, but I am saying that she was dismissed, even though I looked at the schedule to see she was to work until the same time I was to – close.
And after she left I became aware of a party of guests so big they needed three tables to suit the lot of them. Some timing! I felt overwhelmed, and at the same time refused to ask for help. Far be it from me to drag someone into a mess it was my job to clean up!
Add that in tandem with all the pots and pans and ladles and scoops and odds and ends and crap, and I was slowly working down the pile, basically entirely alone back there but for my sparkling water, a cart piled up with dirty dishes, and all the time in the world, going at a crawl. It was a tedious, headache-inducing process, and for the first half of it I was overwhelmed, but I was forcing myself to power through. Someone had to, might as well be me.
And then at 9 PM, the staff began trickling in for the potluck. I had been back there nonstop for over three hours by that point, not even for so much as a bathroom break or a drink of non-sparkling water. But I didn't want to stop, for some reason. I had a job to do, and even if everyone else was having fun snacking themselves into food comas and eyeing the White Elephant gift exchange gifts, I wanted to see it through. I had no desire to step out there, not until the festivities began.
Maybe it's just because I was basically the only introvert there. Hell, not even the rest of the kitchen staff were back there with me, they had already mopped the floors and moved onto the party! Just me, lagging behind by 30 minutes in the pit, soaking and scraping and stacking until I finally stepped out, not done with what I had to do, but done with doing it for the time being.
And yet, what does it say that it haunted me that my work was incomplete, to the point where I left to finish and ended up missing a group photo? (No love lost there, I am as photogenic as Dr. Alto Clef.)
What does it say that someone dripped caramel onto a non-paper plate and I found myself voicing my annoyance that I would have to clean it?
This kind of work ethic got me less rewarded than staying on the clock throughout the entire party, being paid to munch on chips and brownies. What? I was intermittently cleaning up back there, I feel I can claim that as time worked.
Don't be afraid to exploit capitalism. What is minimum wage worth to you? I don't know what is to me, but I know what isn't. And it's pressure, self-imposed or otherwise, in a “fast-paced” (overstretched) environment, late into the night, in a figurative and literal grease trap. Know your worth, and be smart about how you get it from those who hold all the cards.
Granted it may have been rewarding to see the back dish-free but that would only be because I was making money doing so.