Pot Washer
Netherland Plaza Hotel
This photo is of the Netherland Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati. I worked there for a year after I finished high school. It is a beautiful art deco building. Although when I worked there, I rarely saw the restored wood and marble. I was a steward. You could find me in the kitchen, tucked in the corner behind stacks of dirty dishes, spraying plates, silverware, and goblets and shoving them into the mouth of the Hobart. Or I’d be next to the utility sink, washing a mound of pots and pans that overflowed onto the floor and down the hall. Or weaving among the cooks with a broom or mop.
Sometimes when I’m in town, I have breakfast at the Netherland’s Palm Court Café and eat bacon and eggs off the china I used to wash and send back “clean” forks still specked with food.
These are my worst days as a Hotel Steward:
1. My first day of work when I found out hotel stewards were not messengers, but dish washers, pot washers and floor moppers. I have no idea why I didn’t research this ahead of time.
2. The day the Asian woman who handed out work uniforms stopped allowing stewards to wear chef coats. Apparently, the cooks complained the pot washers’ choice of dress was confusing the waiters. Plus, the tops were getting unsightly stains. We went back to wearing our steward smocks.
3. The day the chief steward prohibited us from mopping the floors with specially formulated pot detergent. Nothing cuts through floor grease like pot soap. But it’s expensive, so I hid a stash deep in the supply closet for when it was my turn to mop.
4. The day the forty-foot dishwashing machine used for banquets broke during the busiest weekend of the year. The train of dirty dish carts stretched down the hall. One by one the eight foot carts were rolled into the restaurant kitchen where I cursed them and then ran the plates and glasses through the Hobart with my regular load.
5. The day I knocked off the pipe from under the 100 gallon soup pot with my mop, flooding the kitchen with the soup du jour. The sous chef burned his hands refitting the pipe to save his onion soup. I’m surprised I didn’t get fired.
6. The day I spent in the sub basement of the hotel, sorting food scraps and shoveling them into the monster-sized disposal. This food grinder had been broken for a week, so the meat I separated from its bones had rotted. Days later and after numerous showers, the smell lingered. Even now, the smell seems to have not entirely dissipated. There are some odors that penetrate so deep, they last forever.