York Steak House, it was a long banquet styled family corral kind of eatery, with slick brown booths down both sides of the room. Crumbs, there were always crumbs and fat faceless eaters jammed in the corners, where no one would see them eat. I remember the shiny hard rolls on every table, oily and gleaming in the dim orange light, holding on to their luster even as they sank slowly in the icy mashed potato gravy goop in my bus tub, as I carried them and the rest of the gunk and china back to that steaming, seething bay, that churning machine that scalds and burns and shrinks and reduces and emulsifies all organic detritus that enters. My first ever glimpse of a Hobart dish washing machine, and tonight, it was to be manned by a slim Asian man I'll always remember as Phuong, and his was the breath of the fetid garbage itself.
Phuong's back was oddly hunched. It was as if
he had suddenly withdrew his pelvis from the lunge of a sword, or the flight of an arrow. This strange posture only made it more of a struggle for him to reach the width of the "dish chute" and be able to easily close the steel doors, both attached to a single wobbly lever on the exit side. It was quite often that I would wobble into the dish room with a great load in my tub, and heaving with all my strength to bring the burden to rest on the table, I would see the great white wall of foam water rolling towards me, flecks of bleached broccoli, and thrice chewed steak sinew surfing it's steaming crest.
These were the times I would admonish Phuong for placing a dirty bus tub right side up instead of face down which in turn would cause the great volume of "industrial strength grease cutting wash" to come busting out of the dishwasher door, which Phuong always neglected to batten down tightly, of course I admonished him regularly because he was at least thirty years old, had one of the simplest jobs I had ever seen, as I stated earlier, his breath was absolutely rotten, and I would never fail to find him ravenously pilfering those shiny uneaten rolls, or a pack of crackers out of the garbage can slop.
