don't be like the dishwasher

    Well, the good thing is that my apartment now smells like the 4th of July.

     How did I accomplish that, you may wonder? Did I light a sparkler?  Well, no--it's not so easy to find one this time of year, not to mention the fact that I am in Canada, so I wouldn't even know where to look.  What I did do is way easier: I simply grabbed a stick of still-wrapped-in-tin-foil butter, stuck it in the microwave, pressed start, and voila!  You not only have a spark; you get your own fire. Not too mention some very soft, spreadable (slightly ahem blackened) butter...

   And then it smells just like you had lit a ton of sparklers! Forget 4th of July candles from Yankee Candles--who needs em?

   I know, I know, you are all jealous that you didn't come up with it on your own.  Don't feel so bad, not everyone can be as good as me in the kitchen.  

   But that's not what I was going to write about tonight--at least, not until it happened.

    What I was going to talk about was something that, when the occasion calls for it, Drew and I tell each other, Don't be like the dishwasher.

    Yeah, I know, it's not exactly an idiom that you have probably heard before, so let me explain.  

    The other day, I was talking with Emily in the dressing room.  We were going over our usual recounts of the day up till we had to go to work and she said something like, My day was so fabulous; it was just full of relaxing and resting.

    Well, my day had been different--quite the opposite actually, since we had been rehearsing with the new cast all day, and I said, It feels like we are being punished or something, having to rehearse all the time, and we are the ones who decided to extend, making it easier for the company!

    Well, as soon as I said it, I had that niggling guilty feeling that comes when you know you are in the wrong.  And then I remembered, Don't be like the dishwasher. 

   Right. So, the dishwasher.  

    You might not know this, but I enjoyed (for lack of a better word) a career as a waitress at a pizza place in Delaware, called Grotto Pizza. It was perhaps not the most illustrious or long-lived career in the history of careers, seeing as I worked there for approximately two days, but still I learned a valuable lesson from the dishwasher.  

   To keep the turnover of clean dishes going strong, Grotto Pizza employed a young man to do one thing: wash dishes.  Let me just make this clear: he had no other purpose to be there, no other reason for his paycheck but. wash. dishes. That was his sole calling at this restaurant.  Thus, he was called the dishwasher.

   However, every time I bused a table and brought dirty dishes to the dishwasher, he would not only complain and bellyache so much that one would think I was asking him to stand on his hands and wash the dishes with his toes, but he would act utterly shocked that I would dare to have another dirty dish for him to wash.  So each time I went back there (and it happened a lot; it was a restaurant, after all), we would have a conversation that went something like this:

   Me: Got some more dishes here.

   Dishwasher: What?!?! Another dish?!

   Me: (trying to break it gently, now) Well, yeah, I mean it's probably gonna keep happening...

   Dishwasher: (loud sigh precedes) Ugh. (motioning to the sink in which one does indeed wash dishes) I guess you can just put them right there (he completes this with a total defeatist tone).

   Me: Um, okay, thanks. And ah, sorry about the dishes...

   And with that, the dishwasher would get to work, albeit reluctantly.  

    So, whenever Drew or I find ourselves complaining about something that is an inevitable part of life; something that we fully understood when we signed up for it--like the size of a paycheck, or rehearsals, or you know, going to work and actually working (shocking, I know)--then we tell each other:

   Don't be like the dishwasher.