On the surface, washing dishes seems pretty straightforward. If you see a dirty plate, cup, bowl or spoon, you wash it. When you look around the dish room and every piece of silver, flat or cookware is clean, then you go home. It’s not that easy in Antarctica, this is why we have to have meetings twice a day to go over our dish duties. There is not a single person down here excited to be a dishwasher, we are excited to be in Antarctica and the cup stops there.
Our bosses think we need constant reminding on how to make coffee, wipe a table and it won’t surprise me if tomorrow they tell us how to wipe our ass. Even though I hate our daily meetings, I have to admit I was the one who came up with the protocol called, “Fake it Clean.”
If I want to be outside in Antarctica, I have to get out of the Galley. The faster I clean, the quicker I get to stick my tongue on a metal pole and experience all that Antarctica has to offer. Cleaning time is time wasted. I’ve learned that instead of making the floor clean, I can fake it clean by sweeping the parts of the floor that look dirty instead of the whole floor. Pots that have been used to boil chicken don’t need to go through the whole sanitizing process, if I can simply dip them in water. Instead of making the pot clean, I have faked the pot clean and saved a few minutes. A few minutes here, a couple of seconds there may mean salmonella for breakfast, but I only eat lunch.
Getting out of work 30 minutes early may make the difference between getting to the bar for last call or going to the bar for more drinks. One shot of whiskey and I remember I’m a fucking dishwasher. Two shots of whiskey, I’m a dishwasher. Faking it clean and getting to the bar in time to hear stories from people who get to work in the outside and experience Antarctica, makes it feel like I’m living the Antarctica experience by proxy. “Don’t make it clean. Fake it clean.” This is my mantra.
Today, I’ve been told, our daily meeting is crucial. The last time we were put on “High Alert” for a meeting it was because we found out we were using a toxic substance to clean the counters. They said this was why people were getting sick. People didn’t get sick when it was my turn to clean the counters, because I hadn’t used the toxic product to clean—it took too long. With soap and water, I had faked the counters clean.
Once the lunch room crowd had left and just before we began the deep clean to prepare the Galley for dinner my boss gathered up the dishwashers and we sat down at two circular tables.
“We have a gift for you today,” she said. “Something that will make your job a lot easier.” And, indeed there was a large box sitting on one of the tables. Inside the box I could only imagine that we were going to get an automatic scrubber for the pot room, because my fingers were starting to curl at night from carpal tunnel syndrome. At the very least, I hoped the box contained a heaping dose of painkillers.
She opened up the box like a mom getting ready to give away Barbie Dolls on Christmas morning and handed each of us a new plastic apron.
“Now you won’t get so wet when you wash dishes,” she said.
In a place with so few luxuries, this seemed to make everyone happy. I faked it happy. This meant the meeting would be short and I could go back to fake cleaning.
