-i have decided to forget the chapters at this point in my story, for i believe that these representations and images would go better as an introduction. as you have noticed by now, there is no plot, and it is all quite informative. continue...

It is widely unknown how the back of the house Ritto came to America. There were rumors that many of them crossed the border by foot, but that was only a rumor. The prep cooks did not talk about it except within themselves, and it was extremely hard to delve into their former lives as Mexicans. Many of them had changed their first names in order to feign their identity – others just their last names. Others were bold enough to change neither name. The fact was that they were not citizens, and the fact was that this was common practice in the restaurant world. And so the back of the house was comprised of mainly, but not limited to, Rittos that knew very little of their counterparts’ world in the front of the house.

            The language barrier was often time comical. A few of the Mexicans would try to speak English, but of course they were so completely surrounded by their own “kind”, that it simply wasn’t necessary. A few would take up the mannerisms of Americans, but, again, it was unnecessary. The two worlds (the back of the house and the front of the house) thus were separated by both language and custom, and both were content within their little realms. And what divided them? Tile. The tile of the front of the house seemed better; it was fake marble and quite expensive – it was water-resiistant, it was cleaned with utmost care, it was the front of the house. The back of the house tile was for utility only, it was worse; it would suck up water leaking from the garbage cans and soda machine through dark grout, and then once squeegeed, would be spit back out for a Mexican to slip on. It wreaked. When washed, it was only splattered with water.

            However, quite a phenomenon occurred. For it was within the middle where both worlds met in order to keep the machine moving that was the restaurant: each world converged at the center into a grey middle world; a world in which both came to together to at the dish pit. Servers would bring the used plates in and deposit them in what is known as the “dish pit” and a BOH Ritto would deposit it then into quite a machine. The stainless steel beast would rinse with extremely heated water, then sanitize, the repeat, and the used dishes would exit out of the other side and suddenly there were clean plates. And most restaurants would use this mechanism. And most restaurants would use Mexicans. And most Mexicans dealt with this process in the same way:

            “Gracias.”

            And that was all.