In the final pages of Dishwasher Pete Jordan finally decides to give up the whole dish gig and retires. He made it to dishing in a total of thirty three states, Gulf Shores, Alabama being his last. He is now a retired man. Three days later he’s already eighty miles away and back in school. One year later he and his girlfriend, Amy Joe, get married on a ferry boat crossing the San Francisco Bay. Pete and his wife move to Amsterdam were he is studying and decide they wanted to stay so Pete applies for a citizenship making Amsterdam their new home. But everything does not go as smoothly as planned; Pete cannot find work since he is American and fears he and his wife will be forced to move back to the states. You see that Pete finally reaches a point where he is tired of coming home with the same new of his bad luck forcing him to make a serious choice. He decides he will dish again. Pete prints up flyers and goes to restaurant after restaurant looking for a job but he is turned down time after time. He is confused, he has more than enough qualifications to work at any of the restaurants, it even says so on his flyer but yet no one will hire him. Finally he meets a kitchen manager at an Australian themed restaurant who sets him strait, he tells Pete if he’s older than twenty-three “I’d have to pay you the full minimum wage. But if I hire a sixteen-year-old to wash the dishes, I pay him a minimum wage that’s half yours” (358). Pete takes this in and thinks “So it’d come to this. Not only was I not qualified to do anything else, but the one thing I could do, I was now overqualified for. In the city where many Americans go to indulge in their vices like pot-smoking and legalized prostitution, I found myself cut off from my own vice, cold turkey (353). This is an ironic ending; in the beginning of this book dishwashing was made out to be an easy low skill job that anyone could do. Pete takes his dishing jobs for granted, they come and go without a second thought but now when he’s actually in serious need of a dish job he is no longer “qualified” to get the job that was once second nature to him.

Jordan, Pete. Dishwasher : One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.

Dishwasher Post: 5

Just because you have money does not mean you have manners; this is one of the lessons Pete Jordan learns in this section of Dishwasher. Pete is currently dishing at a costly lodge in the mountains of Colorado. Here he encounters some wealthy vacationers that often tend to wear on his last nerve. As he is bussing he has many near collisions with the “wealthy snobs” (108), he says “I didn’t understand. Did these rich arrogant pricks really expect me to meekly yield to them? Did they also expect me to curtsy while I was at it? (108). After all of the different places and people Pete has been exposed to through his dish jobs I would expect him to be able to handle himself better in situations such as these. Granted the people might be acting rude, but I still feel he could be more professional about how he acts around them. It is just a part of the career he has chosen.

In a latter area of Pete’s travels he gets a chance to view the opposite side of the spectrum. Now instead of being looked down on because of his job he is being considered too good to be hired as a disher. He is instead offered positions as a waiter due to the fact he is white. In the areas of the country he is in dishing is considered to be a job for colored and Hispanic people. When he finally finds a job the manager puts Pete as the head dishwasher putting him in charge of others who had been there much longer than him. Pete says “Head dishwasher? Me? I barely managed to be the head of myself, let alone heading anyone else (127). You really get a sense of the different cultures in the different parts of the country. One minute people a low life, the next he’s looked up on.

Jordan, Pete. Dishwasher : One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.

Dishwasher: Post 4

“Alaska—the Last Frontier—was, for me, the First Frontier in my new traveling dishwasher adventure” (59), says Pete Jordan in his book Dishwasher. The decision is final now and Pete has set off on the first of his many journeys on his quest to wash dishes in all fifty states. Alaska is just the beginning of this quest; so far he has dished in places such as Denver Colorado, Utah, Saint Louis, Atlanta, New Hampshire, and Los Angeles. Although, his travels are not all fun and care free; he is faced with a diverse group of people who don’t always react to him quite as nicely as he would like. This first happens to him with his girlfriend, Melanie. The end of summer is fast approaching and Pete is planning on going on trip that he invites her to accompany him on. Melanie’s parents urge her otherwise instead telling her to finish college and dump her boyfriend, Pete. They feel he is just a dishwashing bum with no future; he describes them as being “born-again Christian parents” (71). Pete deeply disagrees with them for he isn’t a bum, he has a job and a well paying one that he feels he is quite good at. Even so in by summers end Melanie gives into her parents and dumps him. Although Pete is a pretty content care-free guy you see that he still cares some of what others think about him. He dislikes being insulted about his career choice; because although he’s no doctor or scientist he’s still a working adult just living life in a different way. I think he has to learn not to take the negative things that others might say about him so personally, its part of life and if he likes what he’s doing than that’s all that really matters. Even so the ending of this relationship really ends all ties that might have been holding Pete down; in a way this has given him his freedom to go on pursuing his fantasies.

He says “It was exciting to wake up in the van, stare at the ceiling and struggle to figure out where in the nation I was (73). So now adjusted to his new life Pete knows he has found his path and can pleased with how his life has turned out.

Jordan, Pete. Dishwasher : One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.