The main dishwasher person at the restaurant I work at was out for 5 days with a case of COVID, she was back for less than a week, and now she’s out with an injury. When she’s not there, my work is harder. I’m tired. Yesterday was the first day for a guy hired as a temporary fill-in dishwasher. The schedule had our shifts overlapping for an hour. He’s an experienced dishwasher, I started putting things away that he had washed and stacked (hardest thing at a new place is knowing where things go). He made a comment about ‘we’re gonna get in each other’s way here,’ so I went up front and helped with the customers. I came back when it was close to my time to take over as disher, and he said, ‘What did I just say to you 5 minutes ago?’ I went away again, until the time he was scheduled to leave, told him what time it was, and he said, ‘No one told me to leave yet.’ I went out to the back alley and started busting cardboard boxes to throw in the recycling bin. About 15 minutes later, he came out and was smoking a cigarette. I went in and went to work. My boss knew about all this, she had suggested the cardboard. There were 4 or 5 cooks finishing up in the kitchen, and they heard the interaction better than I thought they could. Two of them said, ‘Go get in his way!” I ended up feeling more good about them having my back than I felt bad about the guy being rude.

Today he apologized for ‘snapping at’ me. I said, ‘I figured it was a long shift, and you were tired…’ He said it was long. I also heard him bitching today about what some cook had put in his sink, ‘It’s a sink, not a garbage can,’ so it wasn’t personal, he doesn’t like anyone messing with his work area. Too bad it’s in the job description.