Free Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage USA by Barbara Ehrenreich Page B

drifting in forty minutes before breakfast is ready, by walker and wheelchair or just marching stiffly on their own power, and scuffle briefly over who sits where. I rush around pouring coffee—decaf only, Linda warns, otherwise things can get pretty wild—and taking “orders,” trying to think of it as a restaurant, although in a normal restaurant, I cannot help thinking, very few customers smell like they're carrying a fresh dump in their undies. If someone rejects the French toast we're offering, Linda and I make toast or a peanut butter sandwich, because the idea, especially at breakfast, is to get them eating fast before they collapse into their plates from low blood sugar or escape back out into the corridor. There's a certain amount of running but no big worry about forgetting things—our “customers” aren't strong in the memory department themselves. I make an effort to learn names: Marguerite, who arrives in the dining room clutching a teddy bear and wearing nothing but a diaper below the waist; Grace, who tracks me with an accusing stare and demands that her cup be refilled even when it hasn't been touched; Letty, a diabetic who has to be watched because she sneaks doughnuts from other people's plates. Ruthie, who softens her French toast by pouring orange juice over it and much of the table, is one of the more with-it gals. She asks my name, and when I tell her, she hoots “Barbara Bush!” Despite my vigorous protestations, the joke is repeated twice during the breakfast service.
    The ugly part is cleaning up. I hadn't realized that a dietary aide is, in large measure, a dishwasher, and there are about forty people—counting the nurses and CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) who have scrounged breakfasts with the residents—to clean up after. You scrape uneaten food off the dishes and into the disposal by hand, rinse the dishes, presoak them, stack them in a rack, and load the rack into the dishwashing machine, which involves bending down almost to floor level with the full rack, which I would guess at about fifteen to twenty pounds, held out in front of you. After the machine has run its course, you let the dishes cool enough to handle, unload the rack, and reload the dishwasher—all the while continuing to clear tables and fetch meals for stragglers. The trick is to always have a new rack ready to go into the machine the minute the last load is done. I've been washing dishes since I was six years old, when my mother assigned me that task so she could enjoy her postprandial cigarette in a timely fashion, and I kind of like working with water, but it's all I can do to keep up with the pace of the dishwashing machine on the one hand and the flow of dirty plates on the other. With the dishes under control, Linda has me vacuum the carpet in the dining room, which really doesn't do anything for the sticky patches, so there's a lot of climbing under tables and scratching mushed muffins off the floor with my fingernails.
    At my midmorning break I join Pete, one of the two cooks on duty in the main kitchen, for a cigarette date. I had chatted with him when I first arrived at seven, before Linda showed up, and he had three questions for me: Where was I from? Where was I living now? Was I married? I give him the short answer to the last question, leaving out the boyfriend for the moment, partly because it doesn't make sense to talk about “the man I live with” when I'm not living with him just now and partly, I admit, because of a craven desire to recruit Pete as an ally, on whatever terms should present themselves. A dietary aide, as I understand the job, is as dependent on a cook as a waitress is. He or she can either make life relatively easy for a server or, if so disposed, set her up for a serious fall. So I go out to the parking lot with him and sit in his car smoking his Marlboros, which feels awkwardly like a real date except that the car doors are wide open to let out the smoke. How do I like the