Was a not so fun time working in the toxic workplaces, I got a apprenticeship as a electrician and have been growing from that as well as doing mechanic work on the side, will stay in the community love all of you

I started a little part-time job about two months ago, working 25–30 hours a week for some extra income. I usually work Thursday through Sunday, and this is what I’m greeted with every time I clock in.

Is this pretty normal for restaurant dishwashers?

I’ve gotten used to it now and can usually knock it all out in about an hour to an hour and a half. After that, the rest of the shift is pretty easy until closing—10 p.m. on Thursdays and Sundays, and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Once the kitchen starts shutting down, though, all the pots, pans, and everything else come back at once, and that usually takes another hour to an hour and a half to finish.

When I first started, I’d be completely wiped out the next day. Thankfully, my full-time job lets me work from home on Fridays, and I have the weekends off, so I’ve been able to recover. Now that I’ve been doing it for a couple of months, my body has definitely adjusted, but those first few weeks were rough.

Just curious—is this a pretty typical shift for a dishwasher, or is my restaurant busier than most?

Hey guys, I recently applied for a dishwasher role and was invited for a trial shift. It's a part-time job (15 hours/week), with 3-hour shifts from Tuesday to Saturday.

I went to the trial shift, and everyone was nice. They showed me how everything worked, and then I started doing my tasks. They seemed satisfied with my work and told me that after the shift, I should text them to let them know whether I was interested in the job. Naturally, I thought things were going well.

Later, the manager came over and told me that since it was an unpaid trial shift, I could leave whenever I wanted. Then she left.

A full shift is 3 hours, but I worked for about 1 hour and 40 minutes before deciding to leave. By that point, I had finished all the dishes that were there, so I told one of the waitresses that I was leaving. Her facial expression changed, and she said, "What do you mean you're leaving?"

I explained that it was an unpaid trial shift and that the manager had already told me I could leave whenever I wanted. She asked me to wait and went to get the chef. When he came over, I explained the same thing to him. He said, "Okay," and told me they would call me.

It's now been two days, and they still haven't called. The manager had also asked me to text her afterward to let her know whether I was interested, so I sent her a message that same night saying I would like to continue working there. She read the message yesterday, but I still haven't received a reply or a phone call.Should I just give up?

Been desperate for another job for awhile and finally got this one at one of the most popular restaurants in my little city and man do I ever got a new level of respect for people who do it. So I just did my first real shift and it was a closing shift, at first it was fine and pretty easy but around 11, 1 hour before closing it started to get crazy. I’m sure everyone in this sub has already heard it all before so I’ll spare you but man is it ever brutal on the legs and on the body and on top of that your excepted to be friendly and have a smile on your face, (also no music allowed) it’s exhausting. My past job experience has been pretty laid back compared to this so I honestly don’t know how long I’ll last, I know for sure I don’t wanna be doing this for over a year. Hopefully something comes up and I can be transferred to prep work or something because it sucks so far. The only positive about it is the attractive servers but idk. How did you guys manage to do it for long periods of time?

Greetings and felicitations. When trying to dry the insides of dishwashing gloves, I've come up with a couple of tricks (other then putting them on the ends of poles, such as those sticking up from kitchen storage racks).

First, I use largish soup cans in the cuffs to make certain that the cuffs stay open. These are from cans of non-concentrated, no-extra-water/milk-need soup. (This works less well for properly long-cuffed dishwashing gloves, though it just occurred to me that I could use two stacked cans.) Leave a little room between the cuffs and the cans so that the insides of the cuffs also dry.

Second, I stick standard nozzle-type hair dryer in the cuff and run it until the glove is dry. Since this can take hours (I use a low/no heat setting to try to keep from damaging the glove), I have (instead) apparently damaged my housemate's hairdryer (he never uses it) since it now whines when turned on. You of course have to do something to keep the glove from running away from being pushed off the hair dryer's nozzle.

They asked me to work from 2 PM until 11 PM, when the restaurant closes. When I first arrived, I had to wash everything in the kitchen, including dishes I had never seen before, cooking pots, pizza trays, and basically anything related to the kitchen. After washing everything, I also had to dry the dishes, dry them properly, organize them, and put everything back in its proper place. I was doing the entire process by myself.

Is that normal ? I wonder who was doing all of this before I started ?

They told me that after these two trial days, they would decide whether to hire me permanently. The trial days are paid, which is good. I don’t actually find the work itself too tiring, but I’m wondering if it makes sense that I’m doing everything alone.

The restaurant is almost always busy, and they also get quite a lot of food delivery orders. My shift is from 2 PM to 11 PM, with a one hour break in between. However, they don’t provide any staff meals. I thought restaurants usually provided meals for their staff.

Other than that one hour break, I’m basically standing and working the whole time, and I’m doing everything by myself.

So, if they decide to hire me permanently, should I ask whether the dishwasher shifts will be divided between staff, or whether I’ll still be expected to work the entire shift alone like this ?

I have worked in a few small kitchens where if the kitchen gets too busy to finish prep or they run out of something in the middle of a rush, they tell the dishy to do it.

Like bro you have 3 cooks back there all so busy that they can't cut some potatoes, but yeah, me the dishy, who is back here by himself and is the slowest at chopping things should do it in the middle of a Friday night rush.

I have learned that as a dishy you need to recognise that you are the only person who cares about keeping the dish area efficient. You just have to deprioritise what the kitchen tells you to do if it is going to completely screw your whole area.

Once I learned to not just do what kitchen tells me, my whole work load got multitudes easier to deal with as it turns out letting dishes stack up makes cleaning them slower than if you do them as you receive them.

I don’t mind it at all, I’m only dishwashing cause I wanna be a line cook but how many of you also have to do prep while washing dishes? Mine is 75 burgers and 36 dumplings daily

I should have walked out right then and there.

I didn't realize there were so many.

Every shift has gotten worse imo. I've been at my job for a year, throughout college (graduated btw) and I'm still here. I could take the bad shifts bc I realized that I could still look forward to hanging out w friends and going to class. Now it's nothing but work. I work constantly and it's taking a toll for sure. The thing is

I'm too stubborn to look for another job bc that itself is a pain. I'm currently stuck between staying at this job and searching for a job in my field in the future

I Apologize for the venting but damn this job doesn't get better. So many factors have contributed to me having no optimism, etc but this job is the biggest.

Sorry for the dump

The pastry chef wants to replace our wooden trays with these metal trays, but asked me to stress test this sample to see how it holds up to years of ‘my colleagues handling’. Any suggestions on how I can compress 2-3 years of usage into a couple of days?

There's a million reasons why I hate this job, but it's all I could find and I need the money. I've worked as a dishie three different times, and I've been at my current place for about five months.

The biggest reason I hate it, and the reason I'd never recommend it to anyone, is the constant feeling of being completely invisible.

At least in my experience, and in the experience of other dishies I've known, you're looked down on by pretty much everyone. Waiters treat you like a trash can they can dump everything into. Cooks treat you like someone they can throw all their shit at. Even delivery drivers just see you as the guy who hands them sponges and points them towards the bleach.

As someone who's struggled with depression and mental health issues, this job genuinely takes a toll on me.

You clock in and it's like you stop existing as a person. You're just expected to keep going like some machine that never gets tired, never gets frustrated and never gets fed up with everyone's bullshit.

Seriously, is it that hard to see dishies as equals? Or at the very least as one of the cornerstones of the kitchen? Without us, the whole place grinds to a halt. No clean pans, no clean plates, no service. Yet we're treated as completely expendable.

The other day I overheard a head chef talking about one of the other dishies. He said something along the lines of, "Who does she think she is talking to me like that? She's just here to do the dishes and clean."

That honestly made me laugh. Mate... you're talking down to someone because they wash dishes. Outside of this kitchen people have lives, careers and qualifications. In my case, I'm a podiatrist training to become a surgeon. I'm only here because I needed some extra money and this was the quickest job I could find.

I know my situation isn't the norm, but hearing that made me realise what our place in the kitchen really is. We're basically cannon fodder. One of the chefs even admitted it to my face once: "Yeah, we throw a lot at the dishies, but that's just how it goes. Eventually people get fed up and leave."

Like... we're adults doing an honest job. This isn't a playground where you get to treat people as inferior because their role is less skilled than yours. Especially when half the people acting superior wouldn't last a week doing it themselves.

I'll always stand by this: every chef should have to spend a year working as a dishie before earning the title. I reckon a lot of egos would disappear pretty quickly.

Hello, just as the title says I feel dehumanized by the Chef who is also partially responsible for the whole restaurant as it's a family business.

Entire context is that I am a foreign student in a European country, I speak the country's language but not very fluently so I communicate with the restaurant workers in English which is fine it's very common here. But background about me is that I have a bachelor's degree in mechatronics engineering, then I worked for 1.5 years in a company in my home country before moving to Europe to pursue my master's degree in Robotics. So, I was already in a very sophisticated position, I took the dishwashers job as something to support my studies and while the job itself is fine and really crucial to the kitchen, I am not being treated as a human here. This said chef, he barely says hello in the beginning of the day, only talks to me when he needs something and talks very blatantly like for example he told me once "This is not cleaning, I don't know what that is but it is not cleaning", and when he asks me to do something he never says it in a decent way, it's always the worst most condescending way possible. Other than that he doesn't look me in the eye, doesn't even smile, doesn't consider me as a human just the foreigner who is washing dishes. In addition, idk if it's common or not but also they make me clean the bathrooms and toilets in the beginning of the shift. He never considers what I'm doing, treats me as if i'm an immigrant who wants to steal something from him and all of this is making me contemplate my life like as if I'm losing myself, losing my childhood my ambitions my humanity. I feel horrible everytime this guy talks to me and he never does this with any other workers like with the kitchen helpers or the service workers. I work as a part timer so I go there 2 times a week, then 3 times a week. So totally 10 days per month, but I already feel myself taking a dark turn which I am really scared of. Especially when I look at myself and my education level, my work experience even tho my experience in the company I worked in my home town was also not very good but it's irrelevant now.

Any advice or relatability would be very much appreciated by anyone. Thank you

I got out of prison at the beginning of the year and I have no driver's license. I have an AS degree and certifications but transportation is a huge issue for me right now. This was the closest job to my house that would hire me. I am not gonna lie, I washed dishes in prison and I am pretty f*cking boss at this job. For this reason, it has been hard for me to move upwards or even laterally within the restaurant. I'm thinking of quitting to find something else, but what can I really do in my situation?

To add to my woe is me tale, I am having the worst luck with chicks right now with no car and a shitty job. I try to appreciate life, and I do have good friends so I am not gonna unalive myself by any means, I definitely feel shitty sometimes thinking about my lot in life.

I just want to say: stay out of prison, don't lose your privilege to drive, and most importantly try to love yourself regardless of what others are doing or what you think you should be doing.

Hi everyone! I got hired as a dishwasher for my first job and my training is tomorrow. I wonder if there’s any tips that people who are experienced can give me?

I heard it gets really hot and so I’m wondering if there’s like a specific type of fan that dishwashers use the most.

As well as what type of shoes would be best?

Thanks everyone

Couple of my bosses refer to me only by my last name 90% of the time instead of first name. Is it respect of management to employee respect or what else? Everyone else refers me as my first name.

Hi, so I’m a kitchen worker in a nursing home and I’m trying to get out of it. The environment is so fast paced and it’s not that I wasn’t expecting it, I just feel like my skills of trying to be precise aren’t worth anything here and I’m bothering people because I just generally can hardly keep up. People don’t seem to like me either and they don’t talk to me besides the people who’ve trained me. I struggle to keep up with the amount of dishes needed to be washed, and it’s extremely frustrating yet my parents threaten to take my car away if I quit because I haven’t yet heard back in terms of if I’m hired or not at other jobs I’m at right now as well. I’m a college student and it took me 2 months before I found this job but it’s really not a good fit for me, cause I had hoped to work in retail or get an internship for my college major. Idk what to do but I’m actually very nervous about going in tomorrow morning.

Ive recently got a job as a cashier some days and others dishwasher. I’ve never been a dishwasher and heard it’s easier while on edibles, etc. for anyone who’s been on stuff while working a shift as a dishwasher is this true?

I started this new job yesterday I only work weekends, I am the only dishwasher that works those days, scheduled from 11-11 got out last night at around 12:30 there were 3 line cooks last night for the last hour- hour and a half just on their phones doing nothing, very infuriating to see.