THERE'S SOMETHING very peaceful about washing dishes. Just you and the dishes, you and the silverware, you and the pots and pans. It's a rather solitary job in an otherwise hectic environment. There's nobody to hassle with except for the waitresses who scream to get their trays filled. A certain rhythm develops, an implicit harmony between the dishwasher and his dishes and the uneaten food he must brush off the plates.
The harmony comes from the dishwasher's unique role, not only in the economy, but in the natural cycle of living and dying. The janitors of an affluent society, dishwashers feed themselves only through cleaning off the uneaten food of others. They are the highest predators of the biological chain, scavengers for people who don't hunt, gather or cook their meals. Depending on how you look at it, they occupy the highest or lowest rung in a society whose purpose is enjoyment. Their services indispensable for running restaurants, they are the vital link in the economy of hedonistic culture. Civilizations without the affluence and leisure to afford dining out certainly do not need dishwashers, but ours can't survive without them.
As in all other aspects of a society that sustains itself on the growth of industrial capital, the restaurants have watched the introduction of automation into their business. High-speed, electric dishwashers are hardly the cause for any luddite outrage, their encroachment onto the tasks of human hands is actually minimal, more a certification and final sterilization than the appropriation of the dishwasher's manual efforts.
WORKING WITH a machine merely adds to the pace of a dishwasher's job. The plates still must be scraped, and the pots and pans scoured between cycles. The mechanical dishwasher never gets forks and spoons clean anyway, leaving at least an invisible film of grease, if not a yellow plastic film of egg yolk, in the trenches between prongs of the forks. The dishwasher makes you run, stooping to grab the buckets from under counters, and testing eye-hand coordination. Reaching with the left hand for not-quite-clean plates; right for dirty, so the left can pick up the stainless stell. A quick move to get glasses, cups, and deep-dished bowls to their separate dishwasher to get them cleaner; dump the detergent, slam the doors, turn the knobs; run to the sink and scrub the pot Gregory just left for you.
"HOW YA' DOIN', Sidd!" Jim asks.
"Fine," What more can I say?