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February 05, 2009

calling Hazel

The company where I work employs around 200 people. Maybe a quarter of those live across the country or--in one case, at least--across the world. The rest of us work on two floors of an office building downtown. We have a "cafe" on one floor and a "kitchen" on the other, and between them there are three dishwashers. The interesting thing about the dishwashers is that although they are certainly used, nobody ever seems to fill them and nobody (ever) seems to empty them. I want to say here, "except me," of course, but that would be a lie. I only ever use the kitchen and rarely even see the cafe since it's on the "other" floor, so there's no way I could be responsible for all three dishwashers.

I'm not in fact even responsible for one dishwasher, though it feels that way. Because whenever (and I mean: when. ever.) I travel to the kitchen with a dish to put into one of the dishwashers, they are either both full of (unrinsed) dishes haphazardly jumbled on the racks, or they are full of clean dishes that need unloading, and the sink is full of dirty dishes. I stand with my bowl, or plate, or mug, and what I think is "oh, fuck it," but what I do is re-load the dirty dishes to fit in some of the ones in the sink (gingerly picking through the soggy paper towels, kleenexes, used tea bags, straws, et cetera), put detergent in and start it washing; then I unload the clean dishes from the other dishwasher and put them away. Then I rinse off the dirty dishes in the sink and stack them next to the sink so that I can rinse off my bowl, plate, mug, and I stack that too.

Usually while I'm doing this sort of thing people wander in and out. Sometimes they add to the pile next to the dishwasher; sometimes they hand their dirty dish to me; sometimes they say, ha ha, "Aren't you nice!" (no); sometimes they say, "You know, we have people who do that" (no we don't); sometimes they avoid any eye contact at all, say nothing, and pretend they are in the kitchen only for the refrigerator, leaving with the dirty dishes they brought in.

Usually I try to act like I'm not really doing what I'm doing--after all, I'm not the cleaning service, am I? Don't I have an actual job? With an office? And work, waiting? Isn't a deadline calling my name?

But every time it's the same old story. It's ridiculous that I feel obliged to do it, but I do. I feel responsible. I see those dishes and right after I think "fuck it," I think, "well, it will only take a minute." What is it about a dirty kitchen that compels me to clean it up? Although maybe the mystery isn't why I do it; maybe the mystery is why nobody else does, and why they won't teach that trick to me.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)