A good writer not only provides entertainment for others, but also gives some fodder for the reader to spark some of his or her own thoughts. With that in mind, after reading Maggie Casey’s “Service with a smile” a couple weeks back, I have some of my own reflections on working in the service industry.

I’ve been working in restaurants, off and on (mostly on), for the last 18 years, and I’m currently employed in one of Durango’s many beloved eateries. It all started washing dishes at a buffet in my hometown of Normal, Ill. (yes, that’s the real name) and has led up to rolling burritos and washing dishes at a local Mexican joint. Though I certainly have my sights on making it as a writer, I’ve become the person who I am today from the experiences in restaurants and the people I’ve met along the way.

I recently heard a co-worker say that there’s always someone who doesn’t mind doing a job most people wouldn’t want to do. That’s how I feel about washing dishes. I can usually escape to a meditational place in my mind (I like to call it Zen dishwashing) and transcend the experience. I also like to write in my head while dish diving, and some of my best pieces of writing have been conceived in the dish pit.

It was certainly not this way at first. At the ripe age of 16, I hated my first diving job, and one night I conceived a plan to get out of work early by opening up a panel in the ceiling and hiding all the remaining dishes up there. I’m sure this act sealed my karmic fate to become a lifelong dishwasher, but I did manage to move upward in the restaurant world by getting a job as a busboy at a sports bar across the street before the dishes were found.

At the sports bar, I performed the usual duties of a teen-age bus boy, and when it was slow, I felt compelled to help out the dishwasher, a sweet single mother who got slammed with dishes and received little help. And there I received an important lesson: the integrity of a restaurant and its employees can be seen in how the dish diver is treated.

When I moved to Gunnison for college, I naturally sought out employment in food service. My first job was as a dishwasher at a junk show of a restaurant, and I would spend an extra hour in the pit cleaning up while the cooks got drunk at the bar. There I also had my one and only near-death experience in a dish pit, when I unknowingly turned on the disposal with sharp knife in the drain. The knife went flying in the air, barely missing me, and that was about the time I decided to try and move upward and become a cook.

I cooked at that gig for a few months and then, unsurprisingly, it closed down due to lack of profits, and I continued my diving odyssey. My next gig was even worse, the dish pit was borderline illegal with only one sink for all the dishes. Plus some of the cooks entertained themselves by playing pranks on the dishwasher; one day a cook devised a system to make flour shoot through the only vent of the dish pit, covering my face in white, mixed with the sweat from toiling over the dishes. Once again, I schemed for upward mobility in the kitchen.

I got sick of that job, and decided to quit and move on up to the ski town of Crested Butte, 30 miles north, where a college student can make a couple more dollars an hour in the restaurant industry. Again, I started at the entry level position of dishwashing. Once I graduated college with a degree in recreation, I decided to put that to use by moving into a tent and saving all my pennies from washing dishes. When winter hit, I migrated south, putting everything I’d learned in college about rock climbing, dirtbagging and recreation into action.

Finally I grew tired of camping out and washing dishes, and sought out employment as a writer. I ended up working in public relations at my alma mater, typing my days away in an office, and earning a much better living compared to my food service days. This lasted for almost three years, but eventually this lifestyle took its toll on me even more than the dirtbag/dish diver life, and I wanted to write my own stories, not those of an institution.

This is when I moved to Durango and found myself in a situation I’d never been in before: it was hard to find a job in food service. (One local restaurant even asked me for a resume for a dishwashing position!) Eventually I found work at a place I enjoy, with good, respectful people, and I split my time washing dishes and serving. From my experience, the guests are also respectful, often repeat customers who know what they want, and occasionally even ask me how my day is going, a gesture that makes me feel grateful to serve up food for them.

My fellow employees are an interesting and diverse bunch: varying from high school students to guys working to provide for their families. One day, I was talking with a teenage co-worker and had the realization that I’d been washing dishes as long as he’d been alive, a notion that could have made me feel terribly depressed if I didn’t love my life and living in Durango.

When I got that job in Normal washing dishes at 16, I never imagined I’d still be dish diving at 34. Who knows how long I’ll be diving, but one thing I do know, is when I’m diving, I’m dreaming, and what is life but a dream?

– Luke Mehall