It always brings a smile to my face when people criticize you and then proceed to show with a condescending how-to-actually-complete-this-task instructional session. This situation occurred the other day at work with a supervisor. I work at a restaurant and it was my turn to clean the dishes. Anyone who has cleaned dishes know that when food is allowed to dry onto the bowl, plate, pot, or whatever once carried the food, it is miserable task to scrub the now crystallized remains. It seemed as if my co-workers were all pulling a prank on me that night because none of the dishes that sat in the back waiting for me were soaking. When an unknowing manager saw how long it was taking me to wash the dishes, he suggested that I pick up the pace. If this were the Oregon Trail, this particular manager was looking for a pace above grueling. When I explained my situation, he exclaimed that he had the perfect solution to my problem. He pulled out a brush, where I was using a tiny green scrubby, and explained this is the key to all our problems. He grabbed the large pot that once contained the soup-of-the-day and proceeded to explain that this brush works miracles on dry build ups and that he is full of a bunch of other useful tips. When he rinsed the suds out of the pot, we looked inside the pot and along the walls remained much of the residue that started before the miracle brush went to work. My manager also had the benefit of scrubbing a pot that had been soaked for 15 minutes as I poured water in the pot when I started doing dishes. Fail.
I learned that dried soup is a bitch to clean, there are no such thing as miracles when it comes to cleaning dishes (or ever), and that when you allow someone to show you the correct way to do something and they fail, or have no idea what they are doing, it’s great fun.
