Observations

So, I just started a job as a dishwasher at a fancy restaurant on the water.  Honestly, I love it!  The fast paced work, constant need for awareness, exciting environment, and delicious smelling food is a situation I find myself enjoying.  Sure I am working for near minimum wage.  Sure I am cleaning dishes and other crap, working at the jobs most other people would never want, nevertheless, I find myself enjoying it.

It has, as I expected it to, provided plenty of opportunity for reflection and increased self-awareness.  Most of the people I work with in the back, especially the dishwashers, speak only Spanish.  I am one of only three or so white folk working in the back, the majority of the rest being Latino/Latina.

I had an interesting experience today, one which left me wondering, though not necessarily with a specific question.

As one of the only white people working in the back, I am also one of the few for whom English is my main language.  Often, the workers speak Spanish to one another, ordering food, joking around, and filling each other in on.... whatever it is they fill each other in on!  I don't speak Spanish (although I am trying my best to learn), so it is often easy to feel left out in the daily communication.  It is also easy to wonder if I am being talked about, if I am messing up, if I am doing something wrong (since I am very new), and am unable to understand directions on how to fix it or improve.

Swing to another moment, when my boss (also white), comes in to the back to check in on me, see how things are going, and to ask whether or not I feel like I am doing OK.  His first language is also English, so it is easy for us to laugh, to joke, and to communicate.  At one point, he was explaining to me that he would like to get to a point where I can close so that the other man I washed dishes with would not have to work for so many hours in a day (for he was there since opening).  As he was explaining, he said the man's name, and the man was able to recognize that he was being spoken about.  Other than this basic recognition of himself as part of the topic of conversation between two men (one being his white boss, the other being his white co-worker), he was unaware  what we were saying about him, or anything else for that matter.  As we laughed and grinned, I could not help but wonder if he felt the same insecurity and doubt that I felt while watching my co-workers chum it up.

I am not sure what the significance of this is.  I think I am starting to wonder what it will be like this upcoming year out in South Dakota, in a place I do not know, around a people I am not familiar with, in a cultural milieu quite different from my own.  I guess I am starting to wonder how much you can ever really identify with someone else who has come from a completely different background or culture.  Event two guys, working the same crap job cleaning dishes, are we ever really equals, even if we perform the same tasks?  Beginning to unpack privilege is a difficult thing, but it is something I am trying to be as open about as possible.

Here's to continual self analysis :)