Jerik Hendrickson

Becoming the Manchild: Part 1

    When I was nineteen I moved from Bismarck, ND to Fargo, ND.  At the time I had concluded that Bismarck had given me all it had to offer.  Most of my friends had already made the same move.  It was time for me to begin my adulthood. 

    Adulthood was initially going to begin in early August, but was moved to the end of August when I fell in love with a girl.  After a few idyllic weeks, I finally left.  Unfortunately she soon found someone else and our communication became slightly one-sided.  I spent a lot of time talking to her mother, who generally started things off with “She’s not home right now,” followed by “Have you found a job yet?”

    “No.  No I haven’t!” I’d say in my best because-I‘m-real-depressed voice.  I holed up in my new room and got over it, killing off the last of my childhood and mastering a few magic tricks in the process.  I emerged with new certainty:  I had to get a job.  I had to be an adult. 

    I applied all over town.  Cake decorator, electronics salesmen, laundromat attendant.  I learned quickly that the process of getting a job with little or no previous job experience was bullshit.  The whole “call them a few days after you apply to let them know you’re interested” thing.  The whole “try to give your application directly to a manager” thing.  It was all bullshit!  They either never talked to me again, or totally ignored my “interest” in the position.  One guy told me I more or less had the job, he just had to inform some higher-ups, and to expect a call from him that Friday.  I still haven’t heard from him.  I’ll just assume he’s been too busy grooming his horrible goatee.

    One Friday I was taking a nap when I received a call on our house’s rarely used landline.  Calls on the line were almost always for my roommate Sean, who held off on getting a cellphone until the peer-generated ridicule became too much.  However this time, it was for me.  It was a local restaurant I’d applied to over a month prior.  The esteemed title of dishwasher.  The voice on the phone told me a position opened up and if I was still interested I could start as a dishwasher on Monday.  I was half awake, but I told the voice I was “interested”. 

    That Monday I got up early and headed to the restaurant: a German diner exclusive to the state where I was greeted with a ratty old shirt bearing their logo, and an apron that appeared to have gone unwashed since the 80’s.  I was instantly weirded out by the fact that the guy training me looked exactly like me.  His name was Travis.  We had the same beard, the same hair, the same body type.  He was just a bit taller than me.  All the other employees eyeballed us instantly.  Travis told me the reason I’d been given the job was the “tiny Spanish woman” who they had hired fell and hurt her leg.  She told them she would never be coming back to work. 

    We instantly got to it, filling the giant sink with hot water that I had to constantly dip my hands into even though the temperature made that act almost unbearable.  Apparently you couldn’t make it any colder. 

    “Yeah that kinda sucks!” Travis said.  So does this job, I thought. 

    We started cleaning dishes and very soon we were incredibly behind.  The amount of dirty dishes coming in was immense in comparison to the amount of clean dishes going out.  I don’t think it was entirely because of me, since I was sweating and my hands were slowly becoming wrinkly, enflamed chunks of human at the end of each of my arms.  The job was exhausting. 

    “It’ll be better when you’re done training and can do this by yourself.”

    What?  “By myself?”  The seemingly impossible task of keeping up with these dishes was apparently meant for one person.  I wanted to puke. 

    My duty was to get all the larger chunks of food off of each dish and load it onto a rack which would then be loaded by Travis into a sterilizing machine.  It appeared that my trainer’s task was to press the “start” button on the sterilizer.  This daunting task also included drinking endless refills of soda.  No wonder I was falling behind. 

    “Yeah if you get any unopened jelly packets, just wash them off and throw them in this bucket here.”  What?  He was serious.  Apparently if a customer didn’t use their single serving of jelly, it wasn’t just tossed out.  It was cleaned off and put into a bucket for the purpose of giving it to another customer later.  I still find this odd.  I realize that the packets are sealed and everything but still. 

    “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” said Travis. 

    Once the clean dishes came out, I had to abandon the spot-washing job, stack the items that were now clean, and put them on a large series of shelves.  Travis informed me that the cooks got mad if they had to come over to these shelves too often to get plates so he usually just ran over and placed stacks of them onto a shelf located high above the grill.  I started across the kitchen, only to discover that for some reason the entire kitchen floor was wet.  I would soon learn that this fact never changed.  I’m not sure why or how but that floor did not dry.  It also provided no traction for my shoes, which apparently were not up to dishwasher specs.  Of course I imagined myself sliding over to the grill, stack of plates in hand, only to slip while I was placing them on the shelf.  I’d fall onto the grill for sure, and my enflamed wrinkly hands would be cooked, presumably medium rare, and hopefully I could be like the little Spanish woman and never have to come back to work again.  No voy a ser capaz de trabajar pero al menos voy a ser delicioso!!!

     After a few hours of the intense dishwashing routine and about 20 daunting trips across the kitchen to cheat death over the grill, a man in a suit came into the kitchen area.  He had a heavy accent that I couldn’t place. 

    “Ayyy!  How is evything in my beautiful store?!”  he said to Travis. 
    “Good,” Travis said, “This is our new dishwasher, Jared”
    “Jared!  Ayy!  How you likin’ da job so far, eh!?”
    “Uh.  Well, it’s Jerik” 
    “Jaret!  Ayy!  How you likin’ da job so far, eh!?”
    “Well, it’s going pretty well so far.”
    “Alright!  Thass what I like to hear!  Listen to me, if anyone, and I mean anyone gives you any trouble, you talk to me, you know?  I take care of ‘em!  Don’t let nobody give you no trouble!”
    “Ha.  Ok!”

    Travis said that the man in the suit with was the owner of the restaurant, and he stopped in every now and then, and I should just do whatever he tells me too. 

    “One time he asked me to sweep the parking lot.”

    Weird.

    After dropping and destroying a few plates, things started to slow down and we were able to keep up with the flow of dishes.  My hands felt like I was wearing gloves made of pain. 

    One of the cooks, a woman who could only be loosely described as a “woman” came over and initiated a fist pound with me.  She then invited me to a poker game that all the employees were taking part in.  I said I couldn’t make it and she said it was for the best because she would have kicked my ass and taken all of my money anyway.  I half expected her to spit a wad of chew in my face and call me a pussy.

    “Ha!  Well, I’ll see you at the poker game,” Travis said to the cook, “We’re going to get to work on the bathrooms.”

    The bathrooms.  Yes.  After a long day of scraping gravy off of hundreds of plates made to look like old fashioned cast-iron skillets, we had to clean both of the bathrooms. 

    “It’s not so bad.  Sometimes someone will make a huge mess, but not that often.”

    For me, “sometimes” is just too often.  I’d already worked a job that included vast amounts of poop — I‘d had my fill.  Fortunately Travis did most of the cleaning. 

    We then had to take out several giant bags of garbage.  Apparently there is nothing the dishwasher doesn’t do.  As we walked outside to the trash bins, Travis asked me how the job was going so far, and if I’d probably stick with it. 

    “Yeah it’s not bad,” was all I could say.  I was definitely lying.  Sorry Travis. 

    My training shift was over, and it would be the only training shift I’d receive.  The next shift would be the real deal.  I didn’t feel like I’d fully learned all that the job required.  All I had learned was that they kept their grill very hot, and that the kitchen was wet and dangerous. 

    I went home and tried to take a nap, but I had the most nervous, gut-wrenching feeling ever.  I did not want to return to this job.  Not because it was hard or even because I was too lazy to deal.  I just couldn’t see myself keeping the job and staying sane.  It was very simple to me.  There was no doubt in my mind that I needed a job, but fuck.  I called the diner that night and asked for the manager.  He was no longer in, so I left a message.

     “Yeah, just tell him that Jerik Hendrickson the new dishwasher called and that I’m not going to be coming in again.”

    “Ok, I’ll let him know!” the perky voice on the other end said.

    I never got my paycheck for my one training shift.  I’m not sure why.  I even did them the service of washing their filthy apron and t-shirt before I returned them.  I could have just asked for my 36 dollars.  I like to think that I simply paid a 36 dollar fee to never have to wash dishes in a diner again.