Field Trip is a homebase for the research and references that inform the work and life of designer Lauren Scarlett.
[RESEARCH ©FT]
I’ve been reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and it’s making me miss the days of when I washed dishes in a local restaurant. Even out the back, away from customers there was a buzz and conversation and fun. There were things to get annoyed at. Like the fact that only one radio station got signal so I had to listen to Vienna by Ultravox around 10pm every. single. night. I finished every shift with a sodden t-shirt from lugging crates of dishes, glasses and cutlery from the industrial dishwasher to the side where I would unload them still piping hot and wet; putting things back where they belonged while dodging spatially unaware chefs and impressive waitresses carrying way too many things at once. Sometimes a steak knife would pierce my washing up glove and if you’ve never experienced the sensation of dirty dish water sloshing around a rubber glove that your hand is in, you have lived an envious life.
Now washing dishes and putting things away and cleaning are of course mundane tasks. You don’t have to be particularly skilled to do it. But I like to think I was the best dishwasher that restaurant had ever seen. That any restaurant had ever seen. I had systems. I kept my space spotless. I kind of loved it. I loved the physicality of it and the satisfaction of watching something fast paced function smoothly. I loved walking home on summer nights with my headphones in; dreaming about being a designer, being somewhere else in the world, not having to wash dishes for minimum wage anymore.
What I really loved was pre-drinking on shift with the bosses before a Saturday night out. My friend and I would get increasingly tipsy and hope the last remaining customers would kindly piss off so we could leave. Some of my favourite nights though were when we didn’t make it out of the restaurant. We would sit at a table with the owners after closing, pouring ourselves (and secretly each other) triple vodka and cokes and gin and tonics at the bar. I probably learned more about the running of a business on these nights than I ever will again, if only the conversations weren’t steeped in Smirnoff, I might remember what was said. Still, successful nights I think, as I stumbled home having not spent a penny, my cash wage in my back pocket waiting to be stuffed into a jar, smug in the knowledge that I wasn’t working the Sunday lunch shift.
Retrospectively, I had a blast. But this is a romantic tale of kitchen life; skipping over details of back pain, sciatica, rashes on my hands, stereotypical shitty male behaviour that wouldn’t slide today. Towards the end of my time there it felt like hell. My friend had left. I didn’t drink or go out much anymore. I couldn’t wait to leave. I was desperate for my life to actually start. But I do miss the feeling of knowing it was just a part-time job before I got to my real job. I miss fantasising about what designer life was going to be like and what my life as an adult was going to look like. There’s something so fun about not reaching the goal yet. Knowing you’re in that phase of doing grunt work before the real deal. This time is, of course, only deemed fun when you’re no longer in it.
I remember towards the end of my time in sixth form, a teacher asked me what I’d been up to and I wistfully said, “Just enjoying being 18” to which he replied, “That’s really sad Lauren.” Hilariously soaked in nostalgia even as a teenager, but I knew it wouldn’t last, and I was right to make the make the most of it. I was pretty unapologetic in this phase of my life. I lived like I had nothing to lose, I got away with being reckless and willing to go to immoral lengths to have fun. I was bored of life as it was presented to me, so I ran straight at it. Solely focused on experiencing as many things as I possibly could, my teenage self had a better grasp on what’s important than my adult self does; I should let her make more decisions for me. I don’t miss washing dishes and suffering from hellish hangovers but I do miss the chaos, and the highs and all the daydreams had under fluorescent kitchen lights.