wetbacks

the entire kitchen staff at izumis quit wednesday. i came in on thursday night, and put an apron on to wash dishes. at first it was monotonous scrubbing, then the restuarant got entirely too busy and plates kept piling up in my plastic box and people were saying are there any more water glasses? and i'd say ok, i'll wash some more water glasses but i couldn't really keep up, and I just kept scrubbing away and then it wasn't so much monotonous as it was completely hellish. i wasn't gently tapping plates in the garbage can to dispose of excess foodstuffs anymore - i was grabbing piles of rice and half-eaten sushi with my bare hands and throwing it into the garbage, throwing dishes into the sink, half-scrubbing the shit off, no longer caring about touching vile foods. i remember the sink faucet running the whole time, and i squished my hands into soy soaked rice and not caring about all the disease festering in peoples' mouths, and all the food didn't really become food so much as it was just stuff, cold, wet stuff that needed to be moved. if i had to move fast, i could touch anything and never think twice about it. i'm done being prissy and clean i guess. and later in the evening, a spoon fell into the garbage disposal, and i turned the faucet off to look into the hole of that dark machine to see if i could locate the lost silverware. wearily, i thought about putting my hand down in that machine and imagined my whole hand getting chewed up, i imagined someone accidentally turning the garbage disposal on (with my hand in it) and me just screaming that i've lost my right hand now what the fuck am i supposed to do, so i made sure three times that the garbage disposal switch was off, that the safety mechanism was on, and i stuck my hand in a garbage disposal big enough to gobble up my forearm in a few seconds and felt for the spoon, which i did find. as i pulled my arm out of the unit, my hand did, in fact, get caught on something in the garbage disposal and the flesh on the side of my (left) hand tore, but i didn't really think of it so much because plates in my plastic bucket were piling up, so i let my hand bleed while i scrubbed and scrubbed. i wasn't really sure to what extent i had damaged my hand because the blood was constantly being washed away by the sink faucet, and my hands were purple and waterlogged anyhow, making it impossible to assess the damage. It didn't hurt so much, as i was under enough stress and thinking more about the damned plates and the drinking glasses and the assholes going outside to smoke cigarettes when it could've been their hands in the garbage disposal that were bleeding. i couldn't feel too badly about the dishes being blood-stained as they were prescrubbed and then thrown into a washing machine where they would be pummeled by steaming water jets and detergent, but i wonder how clean they really got. if i knew someone had bled all over my dinner plate, i might feel somewhat uneasy about eating off it. whatever.

so i have a massive gash on my left hand about four inches long. it looks like someone was peeling a carrot and was only allowed one or two passes with the peeler to scrape off as much as they could. the cut stings like hell and i can only imagine it is infected, after touching all that foodstuff. a few days ago, i was contemplating that sometimes maggots will fester in your skin if given the opportunity.

dishwashers often earn minimum wage and come from mexico to america to scrub dishes. old dads and grandpas will complain that pedro is taking their child's summer jobs from them, and get mad at mexicans and maybe even swear that it is unfair. the mexicans, they will say. pedro, they will say. wetbacks.