Dishes
NEVER PUT DISHES OR POTS ON THE FLOOR, THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC INSPECTION FAIL AND WE WILL ALL GET FINED $26. NEVER EVER EVER DON'T DO IT EVER BAD.
And now for your regularly scheduled programming...
Priorities/order to do things
These are not hard and fast rules. Feel free to adapt them to the situation (eg don't put away dishes first if you have enough racks, etc). If you have other suggestions for what might work better, email the workshift manager at hipwm@bsc.coop or contact him/her directly.
Put away enough dishes to give yourself room for racks to dry.
Move and/or clean things piled around the sink and to the right of the sanitizer to give yourself space to work.
Clean dishes or pots, according to the focus of your shift. Instructions for using the sanitizer are below.
If there's space, and if it is appropriate given the nature of what dishes remain to be washed, you can use a sink for sanitizing large items such as cutting boards, baking sheets, large bowls, etc. Empty when you're done your shift.
Refill the sinks and/or soaking tubs with hot soapy water and sanitizer(pink hose). This is important so that things can soak properly and make the job easier for the next person to wash dishes. The tubs for cups and plates and silverware and cooking utensils should always be refilled. Guidelines for when and how sinks should be refilled are below.
Wipe off the wall and tiles behind the garbage disposal. Spray with sanitizer solution. Otherwise mold can (and will!) build up there, which is gross and can make us fail health inspections.
When done, you can put a rack out between the sanitizer and the sink to encourage people to take care of their own dishes.
If you have any time left, do pots if you have a dish shift or do dishes if you have a pots shift.
Efficiency tips
Scrub stuff or load racks while the sanitizer is running.
Soak the really grimy, food-encrusted pots at the beginning of the shift and let the water and soap loosen the soil from them while you take care of things that are easier to wash. Return to the grimy stuff later on. This may require a couple of iterations, ie you can soak stuff, scrub a bit, then soak again if necessary.
When doing pots, empty one sink first if possible. Then you can refill that sink with hot soapy water in order to better soak/wash the other dishes.
Sanitize large items in a sanitizing sink, don't run individual large items through the sanitizer.
Let things drip/air dry as much as possible. Spend as little time as possible drying things by hand. Ceramic plates and bowls dry quickly, so if you do those first you won't have to dry them by hand. You can gently shake racks of silverware of tilt racks of cups to get rid of water that pools on top/inside things.
Take whole trays with you when putting dishes away, don't take a few dishes at a time from the dishroom to the cupboard.
Instructions for specific tasks
Refilling sinks: Sinks should always be refilled after post-lunch dishes so the dinner pots can soak. Whoever does post-dinner dishes later should refill the sinks after their shift. After pre-breakfast or post-breakfast dishes, at least one sink should be completely filled. The others can be half-full if they are empty. Any dishes left in the sinks should be soaking. Use common sense; if the dishes aren't too dirty and the water isn't greasy and disgusting, it's ok to leave the dishes in the same water. If the water is gross then empty and refill the sink with hot water and soap; this can be done without removing all the dishes.
Running the sanitizer: Put the rack of dishes in the sanitizer and close the doors. The food particles have to be sprayed or scrubbed off first; the sanitizer is not a dish scrubber. Use the disposal sink for this, not the soaking/washing sinks. Pull the stopper out of the drain. Run the water by pushing the white switch on its left side until it steams. Put the stopper into the drain. Continue adding water until it is about 3 inches deep. Push the switch on right side, wait until it clicks. Release and let it continue its cycle. Make sure to check the sanitizing fluid level and dish detergent block before starting. Sanitizing fluid is on the floor under the sanitizer and the detergent block is in the dispenser on the wall. If either are empty, then the dishes aren't getting washed and/or sanitized. There are test strips sitting on the ledge under the window. The concentration should be 100ppm. Note that the sanitizer only has to be manually filled for the first cycle. After that, the rinse water from the previous cycle becomes wash water for the next cycle. Drain the water from the sanitizer after your shift.
Using the sink to sanitize: Empty the rightmost sink, fill from the special water-with-some-sanitizer tube. If the water-with-some-sanitizer tube is not working, fill with hot water, and add 1.5 cups of bleach (should be in the dish room, otherwise look in the supply closet). Place already washed items in the water for 90 seconds and allow them to drip/air dry. Empty the sink when finished.
Silverware: You may see some people dump all the silverware from the silverware bin into a silverware tray and put it directly in the sanitizer. These people are wrong and unsanitary; there are no silverware fairies in the sanitizer who will magically lift up the silverware and clean bits of onion off it (we can dream, though). The correct procedure is: (1) Rinse the silverware, e.g. a handful at a time. Make sure all the food, sauce, etc comes off. (2) Distribute each handful in the silverware tray so that there's about one full layer of silverware. If there's more than one layer, the silverware won't get sanitized. If there's too much free space, it's an inefficient use of the sanitizer. (3) Put the tray in the sanitizer and run the sanitizer.
Plastic silverware holder from the dining room: This is just a reminder that this silverware holder gets dirty and needs cleaning sometimes. A good scrub and a trip through the sanitizer will make it sparkly and fresh.
Cleaning the coffee pots or any other container you can't fit your hand inside: A trick for getting the coffee scum that builds up at the bottom of the coffee pot is as follows. Stick a sponge loaded with soap inside the coffee pot. Use a wooden spoon or other large utensil to move the sponge around on the bottom and scrub off the scum. Remove both spoon and sponge. Tada!
Miscellaneous notes: cast iron pans and woks don't go in the dish room. Instead you should just wash them off with water and, if food won't come off, then you can sprinkle some iodized salt on it and run hot water on it for a few minutes. Don't let it soak though - as that will make it rust. Then dry the cast iron pan on the stove top with the burner on, and when it is dry add a little oil and rub it around with paper towels and heat it up. This will re-seal the seasoning on the pan and keep them rust and stick free.