askew askance

six or so months ago, we moved an elderly relative into our home because it was no longer safe for her to live alone. one of the side effects of this happenstance is that there are a LOT, a very very LOT, of additional people constantly in and out and all throughout our home. family, mostly, and some paid caregivers. i could bore you for pages about how this drives me in. sane. but i will leave that for another day. today, we will examine Loading the Dishwasher. 

Loading the Dishwasher is not difficult. you simply place dishes into the racks in such a way that they will have a relatively good chance of getting clean. you can do this in a vast variety of ways. there is no "right" way. 

there are, however, some ways that are dead fucking wrong. 

for example, if there are a half dozen plates aligned in a rack facing east, placing a plate north by northwest across that rack and the adjacent rack is dead fucking wrong. if there are numerous pieces of flatware in the individual holes of the flatware basket, each facing heads up and handles down, putting a handful of mixed pieces heads down into the one open basket on the end (which is for large or odd sized pieces) is dead fucking wrong. 

i mean, these are not great practices in isolation, but taking into consideration the fact that there are exemplars right there, well. you know. that's just dead fucking wrong. 

so. who would do things that way? i will tell you. it's... this one caregiver. no, i am not going to name her name. but i will tell you that she loads the dishwasher incorrectly. no two ways about it - it's wrong. 

now, i have heard justifications for this. maybe she doesn't have a dishwasher, maybe she's never loaded a dishwasher, maybe she lived in russia until she was 8. okay, that last one is definitely true and the others could very well be true, but i contend that they are all red herrings, bunny trails, goose chases. they are distractions. they are irrelevant. 

because it's not about knowing how to do the thing. it's about a bit of observation, a bit of attention, and a whole lot of pattern matching. i mean, it's not an advanced skillset requiring years of technical training. a monkey could do it. literally. 

so, why can't this young lady do it? at this point, i am past the rage and moving on to curiosity about what exactly is hindering her success. can she not detect the pattern? is she in such a goldarned hurry that she can't look at what she is doing? does she not care? is she doing it on purpose?

i can tell you that it is not characteristic of her other actions and behaviors, and i can tell you i haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet, and i will not promise to follow up with you or even ever mention this again.