For most it’s a grind having to wash an assembly line of pots and pans first thing in the morning. For Sophia Velador, who helms the dish pit at the breakfast and lunch spot Alder & Sage in Long Beach, it’s therapeutic.
A sink overflowing with unwashed dishes marks the start of her workday. It’s how she’s made a living for the last 10 years. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Velador, 40, rides three separate buses to Long Beach’s Bluff Heights neighborhood from the home she shares with her mother in Santa Ana, journeying for more than an hour to get to her job as Alder & Sage’s head dishwasher.
SERIES
Stories of often-overlooked restaurant workers making and serving our food.
Sometimes former colleagues who have moved on to other restaurants try to poach her for their new establishments.
“No thank you,” she tells them. “I’m fine where I am.”
To outsiders, the job of a dishwasher is the bottom rung in a restaurant, a gross, difficult and ultimately undesirable job. But it’s arguably the most important role at a dining establishment.
Without a dishwasher, the dish pit would grind to a halt and so would the restaurant.
Dishwashing is often mistaken for an easy entry job in a restaurant. But it’s fast-paced, hard work that requires an understanding of all functioning parts in the restaurant — from the processes to the machinery, says Kerstin Kansteiner, owner of Alder & Sage.
“Nobody talks about these unsung heroes,” Kansteiner says. “Dishwashers are often overlooked, but we should all understand they work with the front of house and back of house and manage to juggle every single person on the team — from chef to server to guest.”
Back-of-house workers like Velador are foundational to the restaurant industry. But they seldom receive the accolades usually reserved for chefs or owners. To find out what one of these less visible jobs demands, we followed Velador on a recent Thursday as she worked a shift.
6:55 a.m.
Clad in black, hair pulled up in a dark bandanna and lips stained bright red with lipstick, Velador looks like a modern, Chicana version of Rosie the Riveter. The wire earbuds over her neck bounce as she briskly walks to catch her first bus of the day at the corner of Euclid Street and West Katella Avenue in Anaheim.
Sophia Velador on the first of three buses she takes to work as a dishwasher in Long Beach. She will clock in about one and a half hours later.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The stop is a few blocks from the home of her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. She spends two nights a week caring for him. She tidies up his place and spends time with him.
Velador’s shift starts at 9 a.m. and she wants to leave ample time to get to work. On the bus, she mostly keeps to herself and listens to music. Others do the same. One man dozes off. Another listens to a loud show without earbuds. The bus rumbles past strip malls, apartment buildings and walled-off condominium complexes.
It’s not until she gets on her second bus that she chats with the woman she calls her “bus friend,” Zhanette Kazanzeva, who has just wrapped up a graveyard shift manning the front desk at a nearby hotel. Kazanzeva often walks with Velador to her third bus of the morning.
On the second leg of her bus commute to Long Beach where she works as a dishwasher, Sophia Velador, left, chats with her “bus friend,” Zhanette Kazanzeva, who is on her way home from her overnight job at a hotel. To catch their next bus, Velador, left, walks with Kazanzeva to their connecting stop. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sometimes Velador wishes she had a car and didn’t have to contend with riding a bus to work and back, which sucks up three hours of her day.
But then she thinks better of it. She used to have a car, but it always seemed to break down. Parking in Long Beach is rough and the parking tickets piled up.
She’s grateful that her boss, Kansteiner, works around her bus schedule. Velador likely could land a job closer to home and save herself the long commute. But she remains loyal to Kansteiner because she says she feels valued at Alder & Sage.
Velador, one of four dishwashers at Alder & Sage, started working with Kansteiner at Berlin Bistro 10 years ago until the restaurant closed in 2022.
During the pandemic, Velador didn’t work. Still, the Berlin crew offered her a cut of the tips.
“They didn’t have to do that,” she says. “That says a lot.”
7:58 a.m.
Velador steps off the bus into dense fog.
During the seven-minute walk to the restaurant, the fog dissipates. She steps into Alder & Sage, an airy and light-filled neighborhood restaurant at Cherry Avenue and 4th Street, along Long Beach’s Retro Row corridor. The restaurant serves locally roasted coffee and small-producer wines with its farm-to-fork breakfast, lunch and brunch.
After taking three buses from Anaheim to Long Beach, Sophia Velador arrives for her shift as a dishwasher at Alder & Sage.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Velador hangs up her bag, takes off her jacket and ties on a black, rubbery apron. She takes out the trash, then checks the fluid in the commercial dishwashing machine with a test strip to make sure there’s enough sanitizer.
“We’re good,” she says to herself.
Velador hangs up a portable speaker and turns it on. Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams” blasts into the dish pit.
She heads to the prep line and grabs a handful of dirty utensils and washes them off before setting them inside the industrial dishwasher, which mixes just the right amount of chemicals to sanitize it all.
Seconds later, she turns on the faucet in the water pit and hoses off a pot that looks to be a third her size. The water splashes onto her and some of the floor.
The chef comes by to say hello and hands Velador a bowl lined with some leftover potato peels.
“Thank you!” he yells out.
Velador spends most of her day standing in front of the dish pit, set against the corner of the restaurant.
She scrubs all manner of kitchenware: trays, pans, cooking sheets, plates, skillets. She arranges it all carefully into plastic crates. Sometimes it’s like a game of Tetris to fit as much of it into the dishwasher as she can. Velador closes the latch and lets the dishwasher run.
She mops the water off the floor.
8:48 a.m.
Velador looks down on an assembly line of dishes: a stainless steel mixing bowl, a blender pitcher, a whisk, dishes, pans and more.
During a typical shift, she says, she washes at least 500 dishes.
Most would get bored with the job. “I feel like it’s therapy for me,” she says. “It’s very satisfying.”
Sophia Velador in the dish pit at Alder & Sage in Long Beach. She often has to lift heavy racks of dirty glasses. One of her jobs is making sure the fluid levels are correct in the dishwashing machine. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Velador doesn’t wear gloves. She doesn’t care for them because they make it difficult to handle the dishes and can make her accidentally drop dishware. She wears gloves only when she uses degreasers, which can be corrosive but are necessary to really clean out an especially soiled pot or pan.
When the dishwashing machine finishes, the pans, plates, glasses and flatware are especially hot.
Some dishwashers report experiencing pain in their hands or even arthritis after a long time on the job. That’s not the case for Velador.
A while back, her feet started hurting. The pain eased after she started wearing orthopedic insoles. Now, she wears three insoles. She buys her shoes one size larger to make them all fit.
10:25 a.m.
Velador has a front-row seat to food waste.
Some plates are cleared off by the time they reach her. But at times, when the restaurant is especially busy, she sees plates with plenty of leftover food. A half-eaten quiche. A sliver of a burger. Lettuce from a barely touched salad.
“It’s sad,” she says. “I see it more than I would like.”
Velador grew up in a working-class family. She graduated from high school but never had the desire to pursue college. She didn’t see the point of paying so much to sit in a classroom to learn. Her first job out of high school was at a Spirit Halloween store. Since then, she’s labored at clothing stores, warehouses and call centers. She says she felt like a “workhorse” in all those jobs except for the one she has now.
Initially, she says, washing dishes was difficult, but she got used to it.
“It’s the first job I’ve had where I didn’t feel like it’s hard, hard labor or pressure,” she says. “Plus, my co-workers are fantastic people.”
She started in the summer of 2015 at Berlin Bistro and just stayed. Velador makes $17.50 an hour plus a portion of the servers’ tips, which amount to about $50 every couple of weeks.
It’s typical for a dishwasher to see the position as entry to jobs as a busser, prep cook and then line cook.
Kansteiner has tried offering her all those jobs. Velador turned them down.
Kansteiner says it’s unusual for someone to stay on as a dishwasher for a decade. Still, she says, she’s learned to respect Velador’s decision.
“Ten years is incredible in my eyes,” she says. “Sophia is a huge part of our work family. I have never experienced her in a bad mood, and she sets the tone in the kitchen as well.”
3:30 p.m.
At the end of Velador’s shift she is wet and dirty. But she says there is a tangible result to all her work: clean cookware.
Velador clocks out for the day and heads out to catch her bus. It’ll take her more than an hour to get home.
At times, Kansteiner says, she’ll find Velador in the dining room bussing tables to help because she knows the restaurant’s staff is overwhelmed.
Nobody has to ask her to help, Kansteiner says. Velador just does it.
Velador says she’d be happy to wash dishes for the next 10 years. She doesn’t aspire to do more.
Velador says she believes society may think she doesn’t “have much to show” for her life because she doesn’t have a car, own a house or have a desire to get married and have children.
She sees it differently.
“I’m happy,” she says. “My family and friends who love and support me make me happy. I’m blessed. Waking up makes me happy, even on my bad days.”