Worst Job. In the World

As part of our initiation into the exciting new world of foodservice, Kathy and I were introduced to the concept of grease traps.

As the name might suggest, grease traps serve to, uh, trap grease. They're a necessary part of the plumbing in any restaurant because they prevent all the kitchen grease from going straight down the drain. In a normal home, that's not a problem. You can pour the occasional pan of bacon grease down the drain without major fear of clogging the municipal waste-treatment system. (It's still not a good idea, because you might clog your own drain, but that's not the city's problem.) But if every restaurant and coffee shop in town did the same thing, you'd have a major biohazard clogging the public sewer system. So you have to install grease traps.

I say grease traps, plural, because every drain pipe that exits the house needs its own grease trap. If you have two sinks, for example, they both need a grease trap. Otherwise, what would be the point? The local Health Department wants to make sure you're not tempted to pour the grease down that drain instead of this one and bypass the grease trap.

Fortunately for us, the house came with two grease traps already installed. Unfortunately for us, they're huge big ugly things that take up space in the backyard. Imagine a rusty steel coffin, about six feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. So a duplex coffin, then. There's a big steel lid held down with bolts and wing nuts that unscrew (or would, if they weren't so rusty). Black. Rusty. Very heavy. And mandatory.

Expensive, too. We were told not to throw out the grease traps (as if "throwing out" a 300-pound object was an option) because they'd cost about $5000 to replace. Okay, then. We're keeping them right where they are.

So they've been sitting outside in the rain for the past several years, collecting rust... and grease. One of the two was disconnected from the household plumbing a long time ago when the previous restaurant decamped, so it's just sitting there taking up space. But the other one has been straining our downstairs kitchen water the whole time. And we've put some nasty stuff down that drain.

Anyway, before we could open the restaurant we had to get the grease trap(s) cleaned. That's part of the charm of grease traps: they filter out and accumulate all the icky stuff -- stuff too nasty for the sewer system, if that gives you any idea. So they need to be cleaned out on a regular basis.

There are people who do this for a living.

We're surrounded by restaurants here, so it wasn't hard to discover who cleans these things. Just watch out the window for a few days and, sure enough, you'll see the big tanker truck from Salinas Tallow Company show up, pull a hose around the back of the neighboring restaurant, and start pumping, ahem, "tallow" out of the grease traps. So we called the number on the side of the truck, made an appointment, and a few days later we met Steve.

Nice guy, Steve. But I gotta tell you, he has the world's worst job. Like being an Army private or a proctologist, I'm glad that there are people who do it, but I'm also glad that I'm not one of them. Steve can have my money. Just don't make me watch.

Actually, I did watch. Call it morbid curiosity, but I really wanted to know what the inside of our two big tanks looked like after years of restaurant service followed by years of neglect followed by years of our mistreatment of it. It hadn't been cleaned in at least 8 years -- our neighbors cleans his weekly -- and it's probably been longer than that. I doubt the restaurant cleaned out its grease traps on its final day of service. Who knows what kind of crud would be in there. Would there be a thick layer of fat? A toxic brew of chemicals? A decomposing body? And how bad would it smell? Little boys need to know this stuff.

Time to lift the lid. Steve and I took turns twisting off the rusty wing nuts from their heavy steel bolts. When that didn't work, we used a hammer to knock the bolts loose. When the last bolt came off and the lid was free I admit I took an involuntary step backwards.

The reality was... somehow disappointing.

The first trap, the unused one, was empty. Steve didn't even charge us to clean it. The second trap, the one that's been in service all this time, was full of water and a bit of floating debris, but nothing noxious or overly disgusting. Kind of what you'd expect to find in the bottom of a kitchen P-trap. Just more of it. No gurgling miasma. No severed hands. Steve took about 30 minutes to suck out all the water with the big hose, plus a few more minutes to scrub the tank with a big brush, before putting the lid back on. That was it; thank you very much; I'll be on my way.

In talking with Steve (from a safe distance), he mentioned that he and his wife might like to come back and visit the tea rooms some day. Maybe for her birthday, he said. I really hope he changes out of his work clothes first. And that she's not a proctologist.