Only Jesus Could Get Pots & Pans That Clean!

No, I’m not being sacrilegious. Before you judge, let me sound out the title for you: Only Hey-Zeus Could Get Pots & Pans That Clean! Jesus was a Latino dishwasher in a restaurant I once worked at and, he was perhaps the best pot scrubber I’ve ever encountered. I still don’t know what his secret to pot scrubbing success was but I do know he was very proud of his abilities. Why I’m even writing about Jesus and his pot scrubbing skills is simple enough. Dishwashers; good ones, are hard to come by. And, in nearly all of the restaurants I worked in from the time I was fourteen and up through college, and for a bit beyond, good dishwashers were rewarded.

However, rewarding a good or even great dishwasher, especially one who was an excellent pot scrubber as well, always seemed counterproductive to me. Truth be known, that was my first step towards becoming a cook. So what is my problem with that? I really don’t have a problem with it in general. But I do think it’s an excellent example of how management, no matter how well intentioned, can sometimes totally miss the big picture.

Look, a dishwasher, although usually considered the bottom of the totem pole and a classic point of entry to the food service industry, is, in my estimation one of the most overlooked pivotal positions in any restaurant. I always told my dishwashers how appreciated they were. As a supervisor, I never let my cooks abuse them. I had a simple rule that all cooks had to follow - you burn it, you scrub it. You see, if a dishwasher decided to fold their arms and refuse to work or, just quit and leave, the restaurant’s wait staff would suffer. Dishes would pile up. Cooks would run out of dishes. Wait staff would have nothing to deliver to their guests.

Think of how an anticipated restaurant visit can be for you or how it can be ruined by dirty silverware. Dried-up egg on your fork isn’t the end of the world but it is an indication that service standards may be out of sync. The dishwasher, regardless of competence, doesn’t set the table. Either the host or the wait staff does. One dirty fork ruins one customer’s (guest’s) experience and everything else is gauged off of that. Now imagine what happens with an incompetent dishwasher or, one who refuses to be abused, walks out. The result is pandemonium. Cooks are rewarded with better pay. Wait staff is rewarded with better shifts and sections. How are dishwashers rewarded? They’re trained to be prep-cooks!

What’s wrong with that? Let’s go back to Jesus. He deserved to be rewarded. But, by making him a prep-cook, management created two problems. They lose a great dishwasher and now they have to find a replacement dishwasher. Finding one of the same caliber is not that easy. That’s why the really good ones stand out. What’s my solution? Give the man a raise. Give him added responsibility. More importantly, make him responsible for training new dishwashers and establishing a legacy of dish washing and pot scrubbing excellence. Everybody wins!

If you apply a standard dictionary definition of management – it’s how an organization’s enterprises and activities are coordinated within a structured environment with specifically defined objectives. Management guru Peter Drucker (1909-2005) defined the management as twofold: marketing and innovation. Yes, I’m still in awe of Alvin Toffler who wrote Future Shock, which I’m re-reading forty years later. In the book he describes how technical innovation consists of three stages, “First, there is the creative, feasible idea. Second, its practical application. Third, its diffusion through society.” With that in mind, innovation, in general is about a concept that can be applied and spread throughout an organization.

Jesus obviously grasped the concept of what it took to make pots and pans, as shiny and bright as when they were new, quickly and effectively. His knowledge and skill was not only practical but it could be learned by and applied by others within the organization. First, to solve a problem, you must first identify it correctly. Second, how many practical solutions are there, or do you know of, to solve this problem and, which may be the most effective in theory? Third, how will the selected solution be most effectively applied in practice for the anticipated result? Miraculous!