I have been unhappy in many of my restaurant jobs but never have I felt as miserable and trapped as I did while working at a little Italian place called Andiamos.

I had recently been fired from Fitzwillys and I was still recovering from the shock when a friend told me he could hook me up working as a dishwasher at his friend's restaurant. Washing dishes was way below my skill level and my expanding self image but I was desperate for income. I made it clear to him that I would only accept the position with the understanding that it was as an entry to cooking.

Andiamos, which means 'Let's Go' in Italian, was a small upscale restaurant that had recently opened on a side street in Northampton, Massachusetts. The dining room was immaculate, each table adorned with a white linen tablecloth and red cloth napkins, the sparse decor dusted every day, the brass fixtures polished to a golden sheen. The chefs stood in an open display kitchen wearing double breasted white coats and wearing cylindrical white paper hats that towered almost two feet above their heads. They all wore colored scarves to denote their rank. Andiamo's claim to fame was homemade pasta which was bought into the kitchen still hanging on drying racks and positioned in the window for passerbys to admire.

I was stationed in a sizable rectangular dish room with a long dish machine against the far wall and three deep stainless steel sinks along the near wall. Aside from running the dirty dishes through the machine and scrubbing the pots and sauté pans I was occasionally given the unpleasant task of scrubbing cases of mussels with steel wool pads to remove the barnacles or whatever it is that covers their shells. It was not just the work that was distasteful but I had never felt so disrespected or unappreciated in my brief working career.

In Fitzwillys, which was one of the busiest restaurants in town, the employees all laughed with each other, interacted regardless of their titles, and socialized outside of work. It was hard for me to understand why so many of the employees at Andiamos took themselves so seriously. They weren't doing a quarter of the business that Fitzwillys had done. Andiamos was selling snobbery to the public, which was fine with me, but they acted like they believed it themselves.

There is no denying that I was bitter but I also knew that I could do their jobs as well as any of them and my requests to be given the chance to demonstrate my abilities were met with condescending sneers and feeble excuses. I began to doubt that the boss had any intention of ever giving me the opportunity that I was asking for. It was not my desire to spend months and months working in this unseemly position in the hopes of earning some good graces so that I could be put at the bottom of the kitchen's pecking order. Perhaps it was my fault for allowing my financial desperation to cause me to accept a job that I wasn't prepared to handle. In Fitzwillys I had gotten used to being respected and aside from the decent pay and the camaraderie I had felt a sense of pride in what I could accomplish. I was running a kitchen in one of the most popular restaurants in town. Not only that but many of the wait staff would look ahead and express relief that I was scheduled to work when they were, knowing that that meant that their food would come out quickly, accurately, and cheerfully.

One Friday night I showed up to work determined to get a straight answer. At the beginning of my shift I confronted the boss and I asked him when we would be able to discuss a timetable for me to be trained as a cook. He side stepped my question with a noncommittal response that sounded too much like the other vague dismissals I had received. In what I considered an additional slap in the face he assigned me to sweep the thirty foot long gravel driveway that lined the left side of the building. He stressed that he wanted it swept well, a task I felt was deliberately meant to keep me in my place and one that I felt was inappropriate on what was already the busiest night of the week. Then he left for the night. I was enraged.

I determined my course of action immediately. I swept that driveway as if it were a palace floor. For three hours I remained outside, all the while steeling myself to do what I knew I desperately wanted to do. Members of the wait staff would come out back and implore me to come in and attend to the growing stack of dishes but I adamantly refused explaining that I had been entrusted with a sacred duty and I would be in as soon as it was completed. It was the most that some of them had ever said to me. At eight o'clock I stepped back into the dish room. One of the waiters was running a rack of silverware through the machine. He seemed very upset with me. I felt like I was finely valued as a member of the staff.

I walked up to Paul, one of the only employees I liked. Paul was the head waiter and he was put in charge when the other boss was not around. I asked Paul for my employee meal. At first he looked at me like I was crazy. He said he needed me to get to work in the dish room. I told him that I was exhausted from my rigorous sweeping and I reminded him that I was entitled to a meal. He understood what was happening and out of respect for me he had the chef prepare me a plate of spinach fettuccini in a white clam sauce. I took it downstairs to the large prep kitchen. I could hear dishes being racked up and slid into the dishwasher while I enjoyed my dinner. When I was done I went upstairs and handed my apron to Paul. I felt badly sticking Paul but I had spent hours fortifying my resolve. I let him know that I appreciated the respect and the kindness that he had always shown me but that my mind was made up. He tried to convince me to reconsider and he told me that one day I would regret what I had done. He was wrong.