You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover (Pt.1)

Polly Self Portrait

The young boy dishwasher at my work is so small that the first day I saw him, back when I started the job in May, I wondered why he wasn’t in school. It turns out that he’s 20 and just very short. He gets teased a lot, called a hobbit etc., and I can’t say I ever gave him much sympathy because his disposition is so nasty I would have fired him months ago. He stands around and bitches constantly about washing dishes. He bitches in the kitchen; he complains when I bring him dishes to the dish pit, he finally announced that he wouldn’t continue there unless he was promoted to prep. To my surprise they started pulling him into the kitchen from time to time, having him do mundane tasks like run the slicer and slam hundreds of pounds of potatoes through the potato cutter for French fries. He told tales to the chefs and prep cooks alike of his guitar skills or as it was put, “what he was really going to do with his life.” I ignored him. The majority of the people there are going to be something else: a writer, an actor, a doctor, an executive chef, a musician.

The other day when he was called from the crazy hell of a steaming room of filthy pots, plates, silverware, garbage, cloth napkins etc. and into the hustling room full of knife wielding hopefuls I noticed that he took the time to go all the way upstairs to the locker room to get a chef’s jacket to replace his snap button, short sleeve, dishwasher shirt. I saw him fussing with all of the buttons as he sat on the stairs and suddenly felt guilty that I’d written him off easily as just a whiny, bitchy, lazy, little fuck. Not that he isn’t a whiny, bitchy, lazy, little fuck, but he still hopes to be something. Me? I like the dishwasher shirts better than the long sleeve multi button, thick chef jackets. They’re just too hot for people to stand in front of such heat for so many hours.

***

When I arrived at work a coworker was standing in my station, the song “Magic Man” blasting from the speakers on the shelf above him as he occasionally sang out “Barracuda!” “What are you doing?” I asked him. He started talking about something work related and I motioned to the speakers, befuddled, as another “Barracuda!” escaped his lips. “I am singing along to Barracuda.” I couldn’t believe these two songs could be mistaken for each other, so I quickly corrected him. He started to argue with me, and I wondered why I cared so much.

***

I saw him crossing the street towards me as I waited downtown for the bus. He was wrapped in a sleeping bag, his hair a wild mass of grey dreadlocks, his clothes so worn they were literally falling from his body. “Can you spare three bucks so I can get something to eat?” he said. I reached into my purse and grabbed the banana that I had brought to work but had no time to eat and extended it to him. “I don’t want a fucking banana; I want three bucks so I can get something to eat!” he yelled out, his face a mass of sores and his teeth an array of brown slivers cracking off in his gums. As I saw him stomp away, still yelling out about something I couldn’t make out, I placed the banana back as I gazed down the street for the next bus, longing to see my number, to rest my aching feet on the ride home.

Currently listening to: Rufus Wainwright Hallelujah.

Tagged as: Heart, Homelessness, Hunger, Restaurant Life