Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 496 posts

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#41

Post by callmeal »

didgetmaster wrote: post #25
Y-bar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

If the job is unskilled (i.e. you can train the next person to do it in less than one hour) and you have several people standing in line to take it if the person doing it, quits; then the current wage is clearly enough. It is just like the price of the meal. If it costs more than people are willing to pay, then it is too expensive; regardless of what you personally think it should cost.

>if the person doing it, quits

If the person doing it (and the role can make or break the business) quits on short notice, then the current wage is clearly not enough.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#42

Post by FredPret »

darby_nine wrote: post #24
infecto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Interesting how serious questions get so quickly downvoted. I am genuinely curious how you would price a dishwasher when the output is important but the work itself…

I get paid six figures to fart in a chair and occasionally type. The idea that I'm more deserving than a dishwasher is insane. Of course I won't turn down the paycheck, but the idea that $10 is anywhere in the ballpark of what the dishwasher deserves is delusional. Certainly they deserve the paycheck more than the vast majority of the people on this forum who get paid orders of magnitude more while doing barely any w…

Where do you get this idea?

What generates more value - a good thought that can steer a product or a company in a better direction, or a pile of clean dishes? Value is disconnected to the difficulty involved in producing it.

In fact, this is a key part of the free market. Precisely because it's easy for people who can do your job to produce a ton of value and hard for dishwashers to do the same, the market tries to push as many people as possible away from dishwashing and towards whatever it is that you do.

The next thing to keep in mind is - if we trained up all the dishwashers, could they do your job? Perhaps we'll find your job is not that easy after all.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#43

Post by sumtechguy »

Filligree wrote: post #34
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #29

I wash dishes by hand as we've got a small kitchen, but one thing I've noticed is that dishwasher machines leave a unique taste/smell that can be noticed when drinking water from washed glasses. It's so much nicer to use a glass that's been hand-washed.

Dishwashers are all designed not to 'waste water', so they don't end up fully rinsing the dishes.

Also they need to be cleaned. Not all dishwashers are created equal. Some leave gunk behind on the bottom. It could be drainage and or poor design. Some have a built in garbage disposal and you have to clean the bin out every once and awhile. If you have never done it. It is not a fun task.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#44

Post by jonhohle »

neilv wrote: post #35
mahoho wrote: post #16

I worked part time as a dishwasher for around 6 years in middle/high school, at a restaurant with no machine, just three sinks and a huge counter. It's definitely a good way to get into the restaurant industry, but also a great way to learn if you hate working at a restaurant.

Related to the importance and underappreciated status of dishwashers... I only sometimes washed dishes at middle school. If you wanted the cafeteria "hot lunch", but your parents didn't pay for it, you could get it that day by volunteering to wash everyone's trays, in lieu of recess. Personally, I think this wasn't a great lesson. In the current very inequitable US environment, I support simply giving nutritious food…

Your last point is rarely discussed and incredibly unfortunate. We’re creating a lower class of citizen who must exist in the shadows, constantly fear being relocated, and can easily be exploited for labor or worse. Then somehow this is packaged as being humane in some way.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#45

Post by romwell »

FredPret wrote: post #36
Y-bar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

While I agree with your sentiment, that logic doesn't hold. If the wage for a job is too low to afford life, then we can say either the job is underpaid or the job is fairly compensated but simply not worth doing. If dishwashers quit in numbers for other jobs, dishwasher pay would have to rise if restaurants can afford it, or the restaurant industry would wither, and from an economic point of view, deservedly so. Of…

The parent comment said nothing about the job, they commented on a full-time wage.

Their point stands.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#46

Post by immibis »

jonhohle wrote: post #39
darby_nine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get paid six figures to fart in a chair and occasionally type. The idea that I'm more deserving than a dishwasher is insane. Of course I won't turn down the paycheck, but the idea that $10 is anywhere in the ballpark of what the dishwasher deserves is delusional. Certainly they deserve the paycheck more than the vast majority of the people on this forum who get paid orders of magnitude more while doing barely any w…

Can you take a person off the street and have them washing dishes competently by this afternoon? Can you take a person off the street and have them doing your job competently by this afternoon? The fable of the plumber captures the essence of this.

I literally did this. At the end of Chaos Communication Camp last year I had no reason to immediately leave, so I went to see if they needed some extra help and ended up drying and stacking dishes for an hour.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#47

Post by ambicapter »

wodenokoto wrote: post #27
pfdietz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point West Virginia had a very large glass industry, including production of drinking glasses for eastern cities. Sustained breakage ensured a large steady market. https://www.glassonline.com/usa-opinions-differ-on-decline-o... "One hundred years ago, by one historian's estimate, the bars, hotels and restaurants of New York City broke 500,000 glass tumblers every day." (2003)

I’ve never worked at a place where we broke 1 glas a day on average, let alone 1 tumbler. That would put my estimate at over a million bars, hotels and restaurants in New York in 1903.

You could work at plenty of places that don't break 1 glass a day and the average could still be 1 glass/day.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#48

Post by jacknews » 

  Being a dishwasher “was the first time I went home proud of myself after a day's work.”
I can relate, I spent a high-school summer dishwashing at a hotel, pretty much my first full-time job, and learned what hard work and long hours actually meant - 6:00 (breakfast) - 24:00 or sometimes later, albeit with breaks between serving times.

Any reasonably-sized restaurant needs a dishwashing machine of some kind though, eg a conveyor - I don't see anything in those photos.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#49

Post by brainwad »

Y-bar wrote: post #23
infecto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Interesting how serious questions get so quickly downvoted. I am genuinely curious how you would price a dishwasher when the output is important but the work itself…

If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

What standard of housing, food, etc? The linked MIT project uses a bunch of median- or near-median costs; it's obviously not reasonable to call 40th-percentile housing costs the basic standard of living, when 40% of the population in fact manage to get by paying less. There are similar objections for other components of their index, such as transportation costs and "civic participation", which appear to take median expenditure in these categories.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#50

Post by FredPret »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #37
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #29

I wash dishes by hand as we've got a small kitchen, but one thing I've noticed is that dishwasher machines leave a unique taste/smell that can be noticed when drinking water from washed glasses. It's so much nicer to use a glass that's been hand-washed.

Surely this would depend on the detergent? Still, going to put this in my stack of lifestyle choices next to film photography and vinyl records

If you have soap residue:

- Try running the dishwasher a second time with no soap, or on a rinse cycle

- If you use soap pods, try putting it not in the soap tray, but directly in with the dishes. [0]

[0] This video (starting at 11:40) explains how soap is used in a dishwasher. This guy (who has an excellent channel) gives tips to maximize soap exposure in your dishwasher, but you can do the opposite to minimize it instead. If you have a good machine, your dishes might still come out clean.

https://youtu.be/jHP942Livy0?si=E1a5kRoc3o7HiVCb&t=702

Post reply on HN