I work in a coffee shop / restaurant in London. We will leave details like the name of the company and the location of the branch out of the picture. As a service worker, I encounter the most bizarre situations only making more evident the abyss between those who are enchained to the wheel in the lower tiers of capitalism and those who are not.

Hell is a job in hospitality in London. And when you are in hell, London could be anywhere.

Can happen anywhere, Hostile Hospitality.

I felt tired, my mind was still somewhere else, but I summoned my resilient energies. I repeated to myself, endlessly, in a whisper that was louder than the music my headphones were blasting. I repeated over and over again.

‘Came on, it’s Friday, come on let’s go. I can do this, I can do this.’

Read part 1.

And then something happened. The dishwasher broke down. The galactic dishwasher, my robot companion, that friendly servant that would wash all the dishes for me, do all the hard labour for me. All these modern thoughts of stainless steel, all this human wisdom and brilliance, stopped because of some bullshit security protocol. Machines and kitchen appliances refuse to be fixed by the dirty unholy hands of the ignorant, and now, every single one demands you to call the technician, who will appear a day later to save the day. And if this technician notices that the machine has been inspected, opened, or manipulated in any shape or form, be sure that the email chain of complaints and liabilities will be long and exhausting.

Im not going to lie, when the dishwasher stopped, I tried to open it, and I tried the always reliable ‘try to switch it off and on’, but nothing worked. My tired brain started spinning, creating ramifications of actions and consequences that may or may not occur in the foreseeable. I took out my plastic apron and elbow-high rubber gloves while people kept bringing more and more dirty dishes. And I went to the head chef.
‘Hey… so… the dishwasher broke down and I don’t know what…’ I said. I was too tired to structure complete sentences.

The head chef didn’t even respond. She left what she was doing and run to the pot wash. I followed her.
She tried to move the cover of the machine and she discovered that was stuck, indeed. She also tried to switch it off and on again (classic). Nothing. ‘Yep’ I thought, ‘I have tried that one too’. She turned back to me and looked down to the floor, and then to one side, then she sighed, and then she closed and opened her eyes as if it was the machine switching off and on. I knew what was happening.

You see, in hospitality, there are these kinds of unwritten rules about everything. Never take the small knife without asking. Bring your own pen. Clean your own stuff. That kind of thing. Other rules are equally silent but much more convoluted. I will try to explain this one the best I can.

I called this one, The Missing Piece rule. Any hospitality place works like a well-oiled old machine. Let me explain; The system is quirky, but the pieces work so everyone understands it. Every person has some duties within the machine, even beyond front-of-the-house and kitchen. Someone is the chatty one that entertains the customers, someone is the one who usually does all the prep, someone takes care of the labels and so on. It doesn’t mean that other people don’t fulfil those particular tasks, it means that there is this delicate balance of people knowing who does what without communicating it.

Everyone does their own thing, and somehow, everything gets done, without someone overseeing what’s actually going on. When someone is missing, this balance is disrupted, and even if someone else comes to cover the position, the menial duties this person would perform still would be not taken care of. So, usually, in hospitality, when someone is missing, the others work harder by supplying energy to the role of this particular person, even if the specific position is covered in theory. This is even more evident when someone is covering a specific position within a team they don’t belong to. The stabilised team will try very subtly to burden the new person with their own set of new tasks, to sort of readjust the balance of the machine.

This is what happened to me. The head chef was thinking ‘Fuck, we don’t have a dishwasher, fuck fuck fuck. How Am I going to manipulate this guy into washing all our things by hand… fuck fuck fuck!’

These are the words she chose to try to manipulate me: ‘Don’t worry, we will help you as much as we can, yeah?’

Luckily, I am not stupid anymore, and I knew how to react. Not at first though. Long story short; I said yes to a position I didn’t belong to as a favour and now, suddenly, I was somehow stuck (just like the dishwasher) with the duty of washing all the dishes by hand, just because when the casualty happened, that was the task I was performing. First, I FELT that I needed to do it. Because, you know, honest labour is deeply rooted in my DNA. I felt angry. I felt vulnerable. I wanted to cry, I wanted to leave on the spot (Now I suddenly understood the other pot wash guy). I felt like I had no choice. Then, a spark, a new idea. ‘Hold on’ I said to myself ‘This is not even your regular location. You have no ties here. You owe nothing to no one. You are doing this as a favour. You are downgrading yourself as a favour. You can say no.’

‘No.’ I said out loud. ‘This is not my job and you guys are not going to help me. I am doing this as an extra. So there is no way I am washing the dishes of a full day by hand’. I might have added some swear words and other not-so-pretty metaphors, but that was the idea.

‘Okay, okay’ the head chef mumbled. Suddenly, her dream was broken. The need for all her team actually get involved in the pot washing was a real tangible possibility. I could have said yes. Actually, most people fall for this. They say yes and they work breaking themselves physically and mentally. Most people don’t stand up for themselves in these cases. The power play is subtle and silent.

The chit-chat spread like wildfire. Now, the team knew that potentially, at least one of them would be washing dishes, if not all. I texted my link in the company, telling her how I would leave at 15:00 no matter what (when my shift was supposed to end) and my absolute opposition to washing all the load by hand. She gave me her blessing and I proceeded to communicate the news: I was leaving at 15:00 no matter what. Suddenly, the energy in the room changed, and the head chef was very interested in getting the dishwasher working, only after I made it clear that I was leaving on my time. We had a look, and try to fix it, I stayed for service and somehow they opened it and I went back to wash dishes until 15:00.

I know it doesn’t sound so bad, and maybe (surely) I am overdramatizing, but this really broke me. At one point I was ready to cry. My eyes were all wet and swollen. I was tired, on schedule and performing a task that didn’t even belong to me. I felt cornered, I felt out of place, I felt exhausted, and kicked when I was down. And I saw myself, doing something, not only I didn’t care for, but I plain hated and was not even my job.

And in this smoothie of exhaustion and bitterness, I was being subtly manipulated. I left when the clock hit exactly three o’clock, I quickly said goodbye to whoever I found on my way out and I left.

I couldn’t help but wonder which lesson was the universe teaching me. In that primal tidal wave, I felt everything at once, but now that the feelings were withering, some lucidity took over, and I was reasoning with myself.

The universe might have tried to teach me humility. More often than not, the layers of irony I have constructed to protect myself from the world confuse me. This requires a reality check, sop I remember where I stand, where I come from. This makes me aware of my privileges and reminds me that every single circumstance can change. I won’t get cocky.

The universe might have tried to teach me serenity. Even in the worst days, in the lowest lows, I should not get nasty. I speak in poetry and many times; I am not aware of the pain words are able to inflict. I am reasonably immunized from the idea others might create inside their brains of myself (I broke those chains long time ago), but not everyone is walking the path at the same peace. I need to be conscious of the words I use, what may seem big at first becomes small afterwards. Nothing is that important.

The universe might have been connecting me with the working class. Changing careers feels like jumping into an abyss. Working and studying is very taxing, and when everything is ending and all the pieces are falling in place, I sort of hoped for a magic door to appear from thin air to my next corporate job. Surprise, it does not work that way. Maybe this lesson is teaching me how unfair our system is, and how the hardest jobs are left for those who are in the most vulnerable positions. Never look down on cleaners or service workers. I will always look at them in the eyes and try to make their day better.

The universe taught me that I am doing much better than I thought I was, and that even when everything looks fucked, I should always stand up for myself. No matter how messy it gets, no matter how angry people will get.

I will listen to the voice saying; I am better than this.