Discipline & Dishwashing

Yesterday, a little after 6:00 PM, I finished working on my part of the students' schedules. There is still work to do in cleaning things up and few hard cases where I have to wait--like letting pots and pans soak--but for the most part, this most difficult part of the summer has concluded. I dread the difficulty of the process, but embrace it as part of my job. I even enjoy it to a degree but it has a heavy cost. My school year does not end and my summer vacation does not begin until I finish. My butt hurts from such prolonged sitting.

It surprises people that I don't get summers off, as if student schedules magically finish themselves. We, as counselors, get the first-drafts from the Student Information System and then have to figure out how to get to finish line for each student, where they get all or most of what they wanted. Our Assistant Principal is remarkably good at creating the Master Schedule, despite cuts to staffing. I have seen others do Master Scheduling so very poorly, with a tremendous amount of effort on our end to rectify the incompetence.

So, after about three weeks, my summer vacation has officially begun. I have no plans to go on a trip or anything. Because of having so many snow days this year, our school year ran long and I missed the family get-together in Minnesota in June. Not much I could do but take it like a man.

I learned the lesson of sticking with something until it is finished through my experiences of being a teen dishwasher at a sketchy Tex-Mex restaurant when a wee lad. OK, I wasn't wee, but I was poor without a car, and like a pauper, I had to find work where I could walk to, since I was automotiveless. And, that limited my employment opportunities. I recall once working about 100 hours in two weeks and looking at my check of $200 and change and despairing of how hard that work had been and how little of a reward. I almost became a Bolshevik.

Reminds me of the time when I was at some trendy coffee shop years ago in Lancaster City--before coffee shops became trendy actually--of a meeting of restaurant workers who were meeting to organize and plot and discuss their grievances. My word to them was "Use the same energy you are wasting here on your pointless pontification--to plot your escape route from the feudal system of the food industry." They didn't thank me for my thoughts. I just muttered to myself..."I was where you are. I'm nothing special and I escaped. So can you if you give up on the Revolution."   Our battles in life are first and foremost individual, and a distant second, global. Until you do the first, don't address the second.

Besides working during prime time, weekend nights with Mondays and Tuesdays off, at a sloppy joint in excruciating heat back in the bowels of the kitchen--like the fires of Mordor--the worst part of the job were the pots and pans. Refried beans in large pots that had turned rock hard like mortar, cheese, salsa, just general goo and slime. I smelled like a two-day old freak-food burrito at Taco Bell. Let it put it this way, even the illegal aliens from Mexicans who staffed the line didn't wash the pots and pans, dishes, and the like. It was for us, the teenage losers who could not do better, with a couple of older dudes who had some major life issue keeping them stuck in the pit.

The pots and pans would pile up all night like a blizzard of metal, aluminum, and gunk, being barfed up from Hell below. Quitting time was on the other side of the pots and pans, and we had to deal with it. More often than not, I took on the cause. It got tired of the endless tug-of-war negotiation of whose turn it was to step into the sink maw and do the dirty deed. I wanted to get home and not having a discussion until two in the morning of whose turn it was do to what. I was taken advantage of by my fellow sudsters. They knew I would give in and go in to the infernal and watery mess and restore order. I recall just putting my head down as beads of sweat dripped into the soapy sink, and just scrubbing away. My back ached as I crouched to accommodate my 6 foot 5 inch frame to the task. Hours.

After two summers of this Hell on earth, I came to a couple of conclusions. First, I wanted to get the f@#ck out of the kitchen once and for all, and leave the mendacity of the restaurant business forever. Getting educated was my way out, and for all of the adversity I had faced as an adolescent, I was in college and by God, I was going to make the most of it--and run through the gauntlet of circumstances trying to smack me down. Second, I came to understand that it was good that I learned that most problems--like pots and pans--and labor in general, can be worked through and finished. One freaking pot at a time. It was not a question of smarts, it was a question of will. I have never forgotten the steel that was put in my soul in the forge of the dishwashing pit. I had walked through it and not away. I took it on, it gave me its best shot. I was bloody and beaten, but kept moving forward.

So, earning a Ph.D.,writing a book, or doing some schedules for three weeks straight, really is just more of the same, just a different sink, with different rewards. I read this morning in my devotional about discipline in Hebrews where the writer states: (Hebrews 12:11)

No discipline is fun while it lasts, but it seems painful at the time. Later, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who have been trained by it.

Where is your pit, your place of discipline, your forge, your sink? Do not despise it....