When I was a senior in HS I worked in the kitchen of a popular honeymoon resort in the Pocono Mts. of PA. I was a dishwasher. I know, you're saying...a dishwasher...so? Well, this paticular resort had a multi course dinner service in GROUP (that's what makes it tough) seatings during a 3 hour window per evening. In a resort that holds several hundred people, that is alot of people making alot of dishes in not alot of time. This paticular resort also served all you can eat. This meant constant rotation of dishware.
When does it get gross you ask? Well, that was on Friday nights...seafood bisque night. There is nothing worse than a neverending stream of half eaten seafood bisque bowls. Since everyone eats most of the meat portions out of the bisque, the stuff that has made its way back was like thin fish pudding. This does not just fall out of the bowl...you have to stick your hands in and clear out the clinging bisque into the trash bin.
After the wonderful seafood bisque wave, you had the standard dishwasher slop. You see the dishes were brought in by the servers and dropped onto a long stainless steel table. (As there may be 20 servers and 3 dishwasher people, the dishes stack up fast and they need somewhere to set them.) The first dish person would have the crappy job of having to scrape the leftover, half eaten...and sometimes half chewed...food off the plates into a commercial sized garbage bin. Of course since there is a neverending stream of dishes always piling up on the table, speed is paramount over neatness...so many times when you tip the plate into the can to slide stuff off, you may miss. Let me tell you...the stuff that hits the floor is smelly mush in the hot kitchen by the end of the night. Not to mention you stand next to the giant bin of half eaten fish bisque in the 100 degree dish area.
Then there are the pots and pans. Not just a few, not just a dozen...but several dozen. And with all kind of grease and baked on stuff. Fun stuff like congealing mushroom gravy, burnt on cream sauces, etc. Individually, they are not bad...but when you have them all spilled together into a sink, not so nice.
And finally, once you get all the dishes and pots/pans done...you get to do general clean up. This means emptying the garbage bags from the large commercial bins you just filled up with dead food. You don't know stink until you smell hot garbage juice.
Needless to say I moved out of the kitchen as soon as a position opened in another part of the resort. To this day the thought of seafood bisque makes me queasy.
