AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He smirked, cocking his head to the side.
“Challenge accepted.” He turned to Dill. “Dilbert, would you time me, please?”
“Of course, Mister Lane.”
I looked over at the general manager.
“Dilbert?”
“Hey,” he sneered as he drew his phone out of his pocket. “Oh, all right. Go ahead, get it out of your system so we can move on.”
“Dilbert, this isn’t something you get out of your system all at once.” I blew air out of my lips. “This is the kind of thing yousavorfor… years and years and years.”
He sneered at me and turned toward Marshall.
“Are you ready, Sir?”
“All set.”
“On your mark, get set… go!”
Marshall dove into the dishes, not even bothering to remove his expensive watch first. To my shock, he looked like he knew what he was doing. Marshall dumped the grodiest dishes into the sudsy water first, then started working on those less difficult to clean.
The cooks used a lot of different little pans and dishes in their tasks, and they were among the hardest pieces to clean. Like the metal tin for mayonnaise. That thing was a huge pain in the butt to clean because it was so narrow.
Marshall sprayed it out like a champ and then dunked it in sudsy water. He worked quickly, piling up dishes in the rinse sink, then dumping more dirty ones into the wash sink, and finally transferring the rinsed dishes into a dark pink sanitizing solution.
“He’s… good,” I said to Dill quietly.
“He knows what he’s doing, all right,” Dill said with a firm nod.
“I actually started my career from the bottom.” Marshall’s eyes darted over to me for a moment before returning to his task. “I’ve busted rocks, I’ve unloaded trucks, worked in mail rooms, and yes, washed dishes.”
“Well, if you washed dishes, then you should have understood how hard it is,” I snapped. “But no, you had to complain, didn’t you?”
Marshall laughed, and for the first time it didn’t sound smarmy or mocking.
“I actually didn’t complain at all.”
“You… what?” I screwed up my face in confusion and turned to Dill. “Didn’t you say that the person who complained was from table number five?”
“Yeah, table number five, right next to the server’s station.” He pointed out the kitchen window and I grimaced when I realized I’d gone to the wrong table.
This whole situation was my fault. I felt blood rushing to my head and this empty feeling in my stomach as my anger dissipated.
And the worst of it was that it looked like this guy might actually win. There were very few dishes left in the wash, and he quickly unloaded those remaining in the disinfecting solution to the drying racks overhead.
I felt a rush of shame that I had prejudged him. Clearly this was not a man unfamiliar with hard labor. His shirt was dark with water stains, and a sheen of sweat shone on his forehead. I started getting worried.
I looked over at Dill’s phone, mostly to make sure that he wasn’t helping Marshall cheat. He had about a minute left.
I turned back to watch Marshall. I figured maybe breaking his nerve might help. A few well-placed taunts can bring down an army.
“Only fifty seconds left, Marshall. Tick tock.”
He flashed his gaze over to me, and then he had the gall to smile. He went into turbo mode, quickly scrubbing the rest of the dishes and plunging them into the sanitizer water. I watched the time tick down, then looked up when he had five seconds left.
My mouth hung open in shock. There, behind him, was a fully laden shelf with clean dishes. I ran my hand down my face and shook my head in disbelief.
