Washing Pots and How I Met My Best Friend
My first job was washing pots in a department store restaurant kitchen. In the Exchange shopping centre in Ilford, a short bus ride from where I lived. The Allders department store, it had previously been an Owen Owen and then became Debenhams after my time. All gone now.
The department store occupied three floors of the shopping centre and the restaurant was on the third floor. I worked Saturdays and Wednesday evenings. I was 15 and it was my first job.
The official job title was “Kitchen Porter.” Unofficially “Pot Wash.” It involved bringing up deliveries, washing pots/trays, emptying the bins and generally keeping the kitchen clean and tidy.
They started me on around £2.35 an hour, rising to £3.20 by the time I left. This was 1996, National Minimum Wage was announced in 1998 but didn’t apply to under 18s.
A friend from the fantasy roleplaying games shop I hung out at worked in the kitchen part-time. He got me an interview with the manager. My first ever job interview! I had done a little bit of work prior to this. A short stint delivering the local newspaper, but being chased by big dogs and getting £5 for a day’s work didn’t seem worth it. There was a trial day at the local Kwik Save supermarket but I was defeated by too many Big Heavy Boxes. I’d also been commissioned to do some drawings for an art shop belonging to the uncle of a school friend, but the very white middle class “friend” would then take half my money (now a director in the civil service it turns out).
The interview went well! I had a Basic Food Hygiene certificate from school. Gary, the manager, quizzed me on a few basics — how I’d dispose of rubbish, what I’d do if I saw a spill etc. He was happy with my responses and I got the job. The hygiene certificate and a Cambridge Stage 1 Latin certificate might be the only two certifications/qualifications I’ve ever held. I’m all about Latin and hygiene. Caecilius in culina est.
The first Saturday was hard. I wasn’t very strong and bringing up all the deliveries from the warehouse, heavy boxes of meat, potatoes and other vegetables, was tough even with a trolley. Doing it all in the morning and being ready for the large pots (with burnt baked beans stuck on the bottom) and trays covered in grease from the breakfast service was even harder. I’d come back to full sinks. I had two large sinks, that was my set up. One for washing and the other for rinsing. I struggled to stay on top of it all, those pots were big and heavy. People coming along and dropping more in. Hot and stuffy in there too, I’d be sweating in my white overcoat and industrial strength black rubber gloves.
Then there were all the trays from the bain-marie especially after the lunch service in the afternoon. Various sizes with leftover food to dispose of. All to clean and put back in the right places.
Saturday was the busiest day. Wednesday evenings were quieter.
Eventually I got up to speed. Got the deliveries brought up and stowed away in the morning before my sinks filled up. Preempted bins by keeping an eye on which ones were almost full. Before long no one had to prod me to do anything, I was on top of it all.
I met my best friend there. John. The start of a long, beautiful friendship based on a shared love of talking about nothing for hours on end. He was a junior chef, working part-time while studying catering at Barking College. I would also go on to the same college to study photography, admitted based on a portfolio of work rather than the requisite four A-C GCSEs. I didn’t complete the course.
John was 17, a year and a half older than me. At that age that was a world of difference and it automatically made him mature, experienced and cool. He was also a towering 6’6” to my 5’8”.
We’d pass the time chatting about film and music. Really anything and everything. We’d speculate if the wall in front of my sink would give way and collapse, crashing down into the street. The mayhem that would ensue. We also stared at some of the parked cars. There was an old Triumph which John kept eyeing up. He would eventually get into Morris Minors.
John would bake big trays of scones and I would sneak a few off. “Fresh warm scones from the oven” is an appropriate answer to the question asked by the proto-Mongolian warlord in Conan the Barbarian, “what is best in life?”
We went out to the local Wetherspoons pub after work. Sometimes we’d go out to Romford. Ten pints some evenings. He was big and used to it and I learned to keep up. I was used to drinking by this point, my first time had been a few months before with a school friend. It wasn’t hard to get served in those parts as a 15 year old. Three pints of bitter and I’d gone home and thrown up everywhere.
Gary, the manager, once lost his temper with me. He’d promised some steak and kidney pie to a friend who was coming to see him at the restaurant. I’d become eager at clearing out the bain-marie trays as soon as the lunch service finished. The earlier the better. Too eager it seems. I’d thrown out the remaining food, including the pie, and started washing the trays. Gary wasn’t pleased. Cornering me by my sink, pinning me against the wall and saying “I’m losing my fucking rag with you!” I shakily wandered over to John and muttered “I think Gary tried to kill me.” Of course he hadn’t really. I was reminded a little of Gary years later when Gordon Ramsay became a thing.
In reality Gary was just a decent no-nonsense kind of guy. Into diving and photography. He had a great photo of a lightning strike in his office that he’d captured on his Minolta (I was really into cameras). He was really old too. Probably around 35.
Everyone in the kitchen was older than me. Many not by much, but I was still the “baby.” We had a much older woman on the dishwasher, Cath, who would keep singing to herself “one day I’ll fly away.” John would mutter “wish she would.” We’d have a good laugh. We always had a good laugh. It was all meant in good fun. There was also Tom, a small grizzled older man who did the kitchen porter job full-time during the week. We all knew he’d spent time inside. Even if you didn’t know, you could tell. Looked like a sort of East London Danny Trejo. The waitresses were bubbly and cheerful, one showed off her nail piercing to me. I didn’t know you could get your nails pierced. Didn’t seem sensible in a kitchen environment.
At some point I decided to shave my head which provided a few laughs. John said I looked like a cross between Blofeld and Oddjob resulting in an unfortunate but hilarious nickname which luckily didn’t stick. The white overcoat and black rubber gloves with the shaved head gave off a slightly sinister vibe. Except I ruined it by smiling too much.
If all this had been a 2000s style mockumentary, like The Office, then I’d be the one doing awkward looks to camera.
Really these were carefree days. No plans, no stress, no hassle. Washing pots, making silly jokes, going to the pub. The soundtrack to all this was nineties Britpop. Blur, Oasis and Pulp playing on the radio on top of the fridge. For some reason Heart FM kept playing Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” At least once an hour. It played in my head later at night and slowly drove me mad.
It’s all a blur now. Those Saturdays and Wednesday evenings. Clocking in, putting on my overcoat and gloves, bringing deliveries up, soaking and washing pots and pans. Changing the bins. Changing the drinks dispensers. Random chats. Popping to the pub to spend my pennies.
It was good honest work. Once I got into a flow it was meditative. Time lost meaning and I had no sense of self. Just in tune with the service going on around me. Working my two sinks. Background shouts of “check on.”
I left the job briefly to try a door-to-door sales job. Nope. Came back a few days later. Pots were better.
I worked there for about a year and half in total. Left in February 1998 when I was 17. Got a part-time job working in a camera shop in central London. John and I lost touch for a little while but we eventually picked up where we’d left off, but switched up to pub crawls around Soho. We haven’t lost touch since. We don’t do pub crawls anymore but our conversations are largely unchanged, i.e. we still talk complete bollocks.
From John I got my appreciation for fine food and tailoring — especially my predilection for tweed.
I’ve lived more lives than I can count since that time. John has seen them all and managed to keep up too. Thanks John, you’re the best!
I still enjoy washing up.
I wonder if Gary is still holding a grudge…
Note: This post was mostly composed in the Exchange shopping centre on my phone, sitting close to where the department store used to be. First time back in these parts in many years. It’s all changed.
