Sostres' first job: Writing is scrubbing

When I finished the second year of secondary education, which would now be, I think, the third year of compulsory secondary education, I had just turned 15. It was June 1990. We moved into the Can Teixidó farmhouse in Alella, and my grandmother quickly realized that my plan—from the pool to the sofa to eating—was to do nothing for the next three months. On Saint John's Day, she said to me late at night: "Tomorrow I have to be in Semon early, could you join me?" We agreed to be ready to leave at 7:30, and that's exactly what we did.

Domingo, her Filipino chauffeur, drove us. My grandmother and I rode in the backseats. It wasn't anything special that she occasionally asked me to join her, and I was happy to oblige. But that morning the conversation was different: "Starting this morning, I need you to work in the kitchen until you return to school." It took me by surprise, but it wasn't within the parameters of my world to refuse her anything. So I said, of course. And we started talking about other things, but we didn't say anything more about this matter.

When we arrived at the store, one of the cooks took me down to the kitchen, assigned me a locker, blue pants, and a white T-shirt. He explained my job: to clean the pots, kitchen utensils, the trays used to hold the food on the buffet, and everything else that needed cleaning. Facing the wall, standing up, of course, with gloves on. There was a dishwasher, but it was only used for the restaurant's dishes, and I was also responsible for it. There was no air conditioning in the kitchen, nor the hygiene standards that have been implemented over the years, nor any kind of protocol or precautionary measure for how employees should be treated.

Being my grandmother's grandson not only gave me no advantage, but I've always thought she told them to do to me everything they did to the newbies, and with particular cruelty. Pranks from the old days. Pulling down your pants while you're washing dishes, hiding your clothes in your locker, locking yourself in the bathroom from the outside—things that not only didn't bother you before, but you laughed at even if you were the recipient; conversations that today would be considered crimes, and for various reasons each one. A brutality at the heart of a wild life. It's true that the 'woke' affectation is hard to bear, but when I hear passionate praise of how things were when we were young, I realize how capricious memory can be.

Besides the heat and the hazing, I remember that I soon became interested in doing my job as well as possible. I remember that at first I felt disgusted by food scraps, and after a few days I took off my gloves so I could scrub more efficiently. I used my own money to buy a more effective detergent against grease and some scouring pads that my other grandmother always talked about, saying they were really useful for her chores around the house. Instinctively and without thinking, I became interested in the world of scrubbing simply because it was my job.

With three days left until I returned to high school, my grandmother invited me to dinner at the best restaurant in Barcelona at the time: Jean-Luc Figueras, on Calle Santa Teresa. She brought the first one from home, and it was a half-kilo can of caviar. She didn't pay me for my work, nor did I expect it. She said, "I brought the caviar because you like it, and I'm a weak grandmother and I've always spoiled you." But the real gift I gave you, the one that's really going to help you, was these three months of washing dishes. Now you know what you'll do if you do nothing. If you're not capable of taking an interest in something and being very good at it and earning your money, this is what awaits you, and knowing it is the only way to avoid it.

Scrubbing a lot taught me to scrub well and the pride of a job well done. I learned some of my obsession with checking every word, every comma in my articles, facing the wall that summer, and it's always stayed with me. Studying and traveling educate, but what teaches, what shapes, what forges is work, hard work, especially if you have talent and something valuable to offer others. What bears the best fruit, yours and others', is fighting for your scrubbing pad, your article, your investment fund, or whatever your profession may be. And caviar is only because you like it.