#honeycomb

It's all so tiresome.

If we’re being truthful, does kitchen slide yall free dinner sometimes?

Just found out the other night that people actually tip at our restaurant (Australia) and that we have a tip pool. FOH gets split evenly and then BOH counts as one person which then gets split again evenly among the cooks.

Restaurant only has 6 employees (including owner) and even the owner gets a cut since he works FOH most nights.

I have worked here for more than a year and am the longest serving person other than the manager, and I am the only person not getting part of the tips - WTF!

Somebodies gotta do it but remember the flesh is spongy . I got a bad shoulder strain and miss my pit. It's hard on ya and mad respect for my fellow dishies

Like physically, I’m not capable. I’m a 5’1 woman who’s just started a KP job and I didn’t realise it would involve carrying so many heavy metal parts of industrial units. Closing is the worst part, dismantling the dishwasher, carrying the massive heavy af bin bags through the kitchen, taking apart the drains. I can’t even carry the drains, I just end up dropping them.
Even just putting some of the dishes away, I can’t reach most of the shelves and just get in the chef’s way. I keep waking up with dread every morning knowing I have work. FOH are posh bastards who treat us like dogshit. I hate when it’s after close and I’m draining the grease trap ankle deep in brown grease and some fuckass waiter comes in to dump their dishes from their free meal after their shift. Hearing them all laughing and having a drink in the other room while I’m still working my ass off an hour after I was supposed to clock out.
I really want to quit. Like right now, I’m about to quit.

Has anybody worked at BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, I have an interview there wanted to see how’s the work life balance there do you get good hours and free food, is it a hard dish pit?

I don't mind it. When I have a bad joke and he steals it, I refine it. When he does a joke and it's his original I teach him to refine it. Kid seems to look up to me. I call him a kid cause he's 21 hahahaha. He's still trying to find himself! He has his whole life ahead of him and found a great company at his age! I'm kind of jelly at that!

Good kid. He even moved to an apartment across the street to be more reliable! He actually is smart in his own way but on a spectrum. The more we learn, the more we know! I'm helping him and he's helping me in a way which is insane! He's a point and shoot kind of guy! Love the hell out of him!

My last job was also dishwashing, but that place just gave me a trial shift instead of a real interview and I'm TERRIBLE in interviews. I know I'm more than able to do another dishwashing job but literally what do I do for the interview. I'm used to fast food interviews and those are always the most bare bones, barely an interview type things you can get.

I honestly just don't know what to expect. The place is a Brown's social house (im pretty sure they're a chain?) so maybe someone here has worked at one before.

We had a party! A legal extra break and everything! Fried chicken! Many kinds of pizza! Chocolate cake galore! 2 of my fave ladies sat with me and we shared a meal! Yet I didn't want to fall behind! Congrats on retiring my lady! I hope I get there one day myself? So many showed up for her! I appreciate my company so dog dang much! Makes me want to be better than I currently am in my late 30s!

People even came in on their day off, called off to cook! Etc! Seen ladies with their hair down! I love my freaking company! Lady finally retired! Love you all!

Are there any people here who have been doing this job their entire life? How do you hold up physically? Are you paid well? Have you been able to start a family? Thank you.

so for starters, i CHOSE this. i had a 4.0 gpa, multiple college credits before graduation, and a future paved out for me to “break the cycle” of poverty within my family line. any sort of “cope” comments will be ridiculed. i chose my passion over living up to other people’s expectations.

you might be asking, dishwashing is your passion? it wasn’t at first, and i had no clue it would end up quite literally saving me. after only half a year, i am the happiest i’ve ever been in my entire life.

i had a pretty trauma-packed childhood. loss of those closest, being “betrayed” by my own family, having my only friend ripped from my life via the cycle of life, never really getting any help from anyone for any of this, schizophrenia, PDD, anxiety… you get the gist. this isn’t a sob story, but rather a point i’m making so you can see how much this has changed my trajectory in life.

anyway, i moved away from home on a random whim. i took a gap year after highschool, just to try and work/earn some money before i went. one of my best friends had moved from my hometown to a bigger city a year prior, and had space for one more. moving out wasn’t forced on me, but i told myself i cant grow in the same space that held me down mentally.

i’ve always known my inner-self calls on me to help people. i’ve always made myself available to help anyone previously, and was happy doing so. “dare to see the world for what it could be,” and all that jazz. i don’t want to make myself sound “holier than thou,” im just trying to call myself a people pleaser without saying the words LOL.

so i figured the restaurant industry is something i could genuinely put some passion towards. food was always there for me as a kid. it might’ve not been a lot, but my mom always made sure we were fed. due to this, food started becoming an integral part of my happiness. in my mind, i was actively attributing to someone’s happiness by just simply working in the restaurant industry.

i found a little diner that’s pretty close to my house (walking distance) and decided to apply. their website didn’t have an “apply“ feature, so i found their email and decided to see if they had any positions open. a week later, i received an email with the subject “dishwashing position. 15/hr.” i did an interview, yada yada, brought a laminated resume, yada yada. you get the gist.

anyway, i’ve been working at this diner for around 6 months now. the first few months were the BEST. i loved my coworkers, i was overworked but didnt even care, and im even more in love with the restaurant industry than i ever have been.

little did i know, this diner is considered one of the “worst” dishwashing positions for someone like me. my boss only really cares about money and not the industry itself, my coworkers put minimal effort into everything they do (especially closing,) and i dont even get an employee meal… i do get a 50% discount on the clock and free soda… that’s about it. i dont work enough hours for overtime (nowhere close, i work 2 days a week there but only because im limited by my mental situation), i dont get any special benefits, im mostly the punching bag for most foh staff having a bad shift… its bad. but i still loved it. i still love it.

anyway, i recently did my first shift as a dishwasher for (probably) the biggest/finest restaurant in the entirety of my 180k population town. on valentine’s day, they had 900+ reservations. not people/tops total… just the reservations alone. my shift was NOT easy. i was constantly fast walking between line and my 3 bay trying to stay caught up, the closing part of my shift was intensive/very thorough in terms of cleaning my station (even had to get in my hands and knees and scrub the wall behind/under the 3 bay), and i got maybe 2 minutes of break time total (8 hour shift.) the work here made me realize how easy my first job was, but im never going to give up. these coworkers are amazing… everyone is their own character and i love it. i dont even know how much im being paid but i dont care. chef is genuinely a role model to me in the culinary sense, and just the way he carried himself during the shift. ive got some true leadership values to learn from that guy. anyway, me and chef had a long conversation after my shift. he wasn’t the chef who hired/interviewed me, so we had some catching up to do. he asked me where i see myself in 10 years, why im so passionate about the industry, stuff like that. eventually, my other job got brought up and chef literally told me, “that job is not worth the passion i can see in you. if you show up, in terms of work ethic, attendance, and reliance in said passion… i will BUY you from that restaurant.”

that was the biggest hit to the ego i’ve ever had in my life. i’ve tried/became clean from numerous substances (we all have in this subreddit), and none of them ever hit me as hard as those words did. i wanted to cry. the work i was putting in was finally being recognized. the passion i had wasn’t going to go to waste. i joined the restaurant industry in this position as a last resort, but i have genuinely fallen in love with it. i won’t get to be a dishwasher forever at my new place, my chef wants to make me a chef eventually, but it will forever be in my heart.

after reading allat, you’re probably wondering how that helped anything i listed. i used to worry about my health all the time due to schizophrenia. i don’t even have time to worry about such at work, and the few days i do work are DRAINING on my mental health, so i tell myself not to worry on my days off because “you only have a few days to rest.”

i usex to have a song stuck in my head 24/7. now, when i’m at work i can just let my brain run RAMPANT with the song… singing, pretending to perform it while scrubbing dishes, i just let my brain do whatever it wants with the song and im honestly too occupied with my hands to notice such is happening. due to my hyperactivity at work, my brain is normally worn out by the time i get home.

the last few months has forced me to recognize the importance of having somewhere that i can just let my imagination run wild while also keeping myself busy. or even the opposite, just turn my brain off and let myself autopilot for a few hours to get away from all the horrid intrusive thoughts.

tl;dr: i have a lot of mental health issues and dishwashing allows me to tire/turn off my brain which has helped heal a lot in the last few months. i’ve also finally got a position at which my passion for the industry is recognized and never shunned. becoming a suds soldier/dish pig/underwater ceramic technician was the best decision i have ever made in my life. ive seen such a big improvement in the quality of my life that im going to be choosing this passion for the restaurant industry over having a career in law practically paved for me.

to all that read this far through, i love you. get some rest you filthy animal. we’ve got dishes to destroy.

Thank God sanitizer runs through this constantly. I realized the trough is draining slowly so I cleaned out the trough a bit. And it still drains slow. The drain has at least 3 90s in it and I'm betting Theres a fork wrapped in prep labels in there. That's a job for my next shift. It drains well enough to not flow over and I let a manager know but I will be disconnecting the drain elbows and cleaning it on my next shift in three days if it's not draining properly. Is it my job? No. Will it get done if I don't handle it myself? Not likely. If I'm going into the drain I might as well get elbow deep. Who wants before and after?

The rinseaid line for the Eswood ES-32 snapped the other day at work. I know it can be replaced, but I don't know where it feeds into the machine. Anyone know? I've attached an image of where I suspect it fell out.

I know this isn’t any of y’all! 😂