Confessions of a Dish Washer

I have a confession to make. Contrary to the title of this blog, I am not really unemployed. The fact is; I am a dishwasher at a Japanese tea house. That’s right, I have a job. The problem is, I don’t consider it a job and therefore think of myself as unemployed. That is the sad truth.

I am not saying that washing dishes is a bad job, because when it comes down to it really isn’t. For one thing there people I work with are really nice, nicer in fact then another of the other bitches I have had to work with over the past few years. I guess that is where the good times end though. Washing dishes certainly isn’t a glorious job, that goes with out saying. And as for the physical labor involved in such a task? Well let’s just say that counting down the hours until I am an office slave again because the truth of the matter is that I don’t like standing for 9 hours a throw, nor do I like the rash that I am developing on my arms. I won’t even mention the killer dish pan hands I’ve got going on. Scouring is hard work.

No, what it most unsavory about washing dishes is that it has changed my very way of life. Working a 9-5 job becomes a whole lot cushier when you start working between the hours of 4 PM and 1 AM...six nights a week. Now I leave for work just around the time I used to get home from work. I eat dinner after 10 PM, I hardly ever watch television, and worst of all I don’t ever get to seen any one I actually enjoy seeing, including my girlfriend. Washing dishes has torn the fabric of my existence.

For so long I had taken for granted my quiet evenings at home, often thinking of them as boring and unproductive. Now that they have been ripped from my life I want them back. Of course my evenings at home, watching lots of TV, eating dinner at a decent hour and actually seeing my girlfriend awake were a lot of the time uneventful affairs, but they were mine and I liked them and would like them returned to me. If I thought my quality of life was poor when I was working for middle aged, fag-hag, Satan, it’s nothing compared to working for the greater good of grease free dishes.

Of course I know that the unemployed, or rather, the under employed life is a difficult one, but I was not prepared for my days to be consumed by job searching and my nights to be consumed by dish washing. That is all I do. That is all I can afford to do. That is all dish washing allows me to do. Like ever other normal person, every one I know works during the day so it is not like I can give some one a call and ask them to entertain me for a few hours as a means to curb my a crushing boredom. Nor can I expect that same person to be awake and interested in so much as a chat at midnight on a Wednesday. Even if I could find such a person, I couldn’t pay for any kind of entertainment because the other draw back of making less then half of what I was making before washing dishes, is that I make $10 more per week than I need to pay my rent. It’s a charmed life.

I just have to keep reminding myself that washing dishes is temporary, as if I can find some kind of solace in that. It all depends on what your definition of temporary is. Terminal illnesses, for example, are temporary. Even a 25 to life prison sentence has the possibility of being temporary. Hopefully have a life outside of washing dishes and looking for a job, is also not temporary.