Already back to school and my first turn at the DISH PIT!!
It seemed like every other day I was in the DISH PIT. Literally, the scum of the kitchen. Our Dish Pit had a metal tray on one side so that the waitstaff could slide the dirty dishes to the other side, where there was a trough of continuing running water in a vast sink that was fllled with gook.
Gook consisted of bits and pieces of food, including drinks, soups, sometimes tea bags, etc. The waitstaff was to scrape the plates into a bucket below the shelf. It got full fast!!
Then they were to place the dirty plate, saucer, cup or silverware on the top. Way too soon, they had stopped scraping to rush back to service the tables. And within minutes, the open middle was jammed with dishes. Nothing was sliding anywhere except – maybe on the floor.
By then the kitchen staff, always cooking something, would throw the hot pan with bits of hardened stuff into the mix.
My job in the Dish Pit consisted of standing in front of an enormous sink with a gaping hole that was a garbage disposal. If a full-size large stock pot ,metal spoon fell in that ( an inappropriate time) it was like a rocket spinning towards space!!
The whole process could stop, and usually, one of the chefs had to reach in there to reset. And my God, that took courage because that jaw could easily have snapped your hand off.