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slop into the waist - high plastic trash barrel behind him. He sprayed out the bus pan with a wall - mounted metal hose, then dropped the clean tub on a shelf so the busboy could grab it when he delivered his next load. With that done, Dave arranged the dirty dishes on green plastic racks and shoved them into the dishwasher, a boxy contraption with sides of dented sheet metal. The machine pulled the racks through, scalding them with hot water, finally pushing them out onto a metal runway.
    Usually, a second person was posted in the dishroom, assigned to the end of the runway to deal with the clean dishes; since it was a Monday, however, and Mondays were typically slow, Dave was on his own this time. After shoving a few racks through the machine, he had to hustle to the other side of the apparatus and attack the steaming items, yanking everything from the racks and sorting it for delivery. Salad plates and bowls were stacked on a long cart, as were the brown plastic roll baskets; the rectangular, metal entree platters were loaded onto a smaller cart, dropped upside - down into deep channels on two sides of the cube - shaped vehicle. Coffee mugs were arranged on trays and the amber beverage cups were overturned and fit together into high columns. Silverware was a nuisance: it came through the machine jumbled on a flat rack, and the knives, forks, and spoons had to be sorted into white plastic receptacles. There were trays, too, laminated fiberboard trays which the customers used to carry cups and napkins and silverware to their tables; the trays were deposited in the dishroom in huge piles, and once they were cleaned, were restacked in identical, unwieldy mounds.
    When Dave had washed and sorted so many dishes that he didn ' t have room for more, or when he had time between bus pans , or when the cooks or managers told him that they were out of something, he distributed what he'd cleaned. Wheeling the carts from the dishroom through a swinging door, he worked his way along what was known as " the line, " the area where food was prepared and customers processed. On one side of the line were the broiler and oven and deep fryer, and the meal assembly stations; on the other side was a walkway through which customers passed with their trays, viewing the food preparation from behind a four - foot - high partition. At the start of the line, Dave muscled the heavy stacks of trays into troughs, then slipped the containers of silverware into a metal rack above the trays. Next he deposited the towers of cups by the soda machine, the coffee mugs by the coffee pot warmers. He left the cartload of entree platters at the broiler, then removed the empty cart. Roll baskets were given to the assemblers, the girls who tossed meat and potatoes and side orders together to form dinners. Finally, salad bowls and plates were stacked in a bin near the cash register, within easy reach of passing customers.
    When Dave finished the distribution process, he returned to the dishroom, where three or four slop - filled bus pans always awaited him. It was a frustrating cycle: wash dishes, distribute them, wash more, distribute them, wash more, etcetera. Dave could never get ahead, never feel any sense of completion, because the dirty dishes kept coming. As unpleasant as the work was, for the first hour - and - a - half of this day ' s shift, things went smoothly for Dave; he labored at a rapid, steady pace and never fell far behind in his bus pan - sorting, dishwashing, or deliveries. At four - thirty, though, the steakhouse went crazy. Unexpectedly, a huge swarm of customers overran the place, poured in all at once. It shouldn ' t have happened, because Mondays were never very hectic and there were no coupons in the newspaper that might have drawn such a throng; nevertheless, the rush struck suddenly, and Dave was soon working at a breakneck pace.
    Full bus pans surrounded him so quickly that they seemed to appear out of thin air; as soon as he finished