Ramón Serrano
Ramón is my favorite dishwasher at the restaurant. Ramón is his real name, though I didn’t know that for weeks. I went about my business, interacting only to hand him pots and plead, in broken Spanish, “Puedes lavar … esta? este? … para mí?” He’d look at me like I was speaking some weird dialect from the planet Jupiter (which would probably be more easily understood), and give the pot a run through the machine.
One day I overheard a few of my coworkers mention him in passing, and I inquired. “That dishwasher … what’s his name?”
“Ramón?” Michael said. “Is that who you’re talking about?”
“Ramón Serrano?” Tyler said, laughing to himself. “Caitlin always used to call him that.”
“Ramón Serrano!?” I said, incredulous and struck at the cheekiness of it, because at the time, I was indeed slicing a leg of serrano ham.
Later, after service, as we cleaned the kitchen, I slipped into the dish pit to grab the squeegee. I’d always just slyly taken it from the top of the machine, but that night, I put on a big smile and pointed at it. “Ramón? Puedo tener … el squeegee?”
“Hee hee hee,” he laughed, his shoulders dancing a little bit. “El squeegee!” He handed it over, shaking his head and repeating the words. “El squeegee!”
—
Since then, I’ve begun looking forward to 4 o’clock, when his day starts. Before heading to the dish room, he preps vegetables in the basement – at that point, I’m usually breading salt cod croquettas or slicing fat-laced hams alongside him. We communicate mostly in Spanish, though sometimes Sixto helps translate. He always brightens my day, making a point of saying hello when he comes in – “Hola squeegee,” is his usual greeting.
I’ve noticed that he keeps a stash of quart containers next to his station, and when he’s not looking, I steal them because I’m a brat. Last week, though, I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar as he witnessed me nab his last quart.
“Eek!” I said, and put it back with a guilty grin.
“No, you take!” he said, giving it back to me.
“No, no!” I put it back.
He put it back on my cutting board.
I threw it at him and tried to dash upstairs. He jumped in front of me and blocked my way. “You take, mamí!” I squealed and ducked under his arms, running to fetch a stack of clean quarts.
“For both of us!” I said as I bounded back down the stairs, pointing first to him and then myself. “We share.”
—
Yesterday, as I readied my panko for breading, I looked over at him. He was cleaning morel mushrooms.
“Ramón, viernes es mi último día. Día último. Last día. Terminada … aquí.”
“Ah,” he said, and expressed some sentiment that I didn’t quite catch.
“Voy a ….” I started, trailing off because I realized I didn’t know how to say “I’m going to miss you,” in Spanish.
Instead, I just pulled on a happy face and punched his arm. “El squeegee, man,” I said.
“Hee hee hee,” his shoulders shook once more. “El squeegee, mamí.”