Today’s Young Babysitters Apparently Can’t Be Bothered To Do The Dishes

Can no young people wash dishes or is it just babysitters who have lost this skill? Or is it just my babysitters? My husband and I can’t help but notice that only one of our babysitters over the last five years is capable of washing dishes. They fall into one of three categories:

1) Sadly, the most prominent category is the worst one. That’s where the babysitter simply piles all the dishes into the sink and doesn’t touch them. What the heck is this? When I was a babysitter, I never would have even dreamed of such a thing. I cleaned every single dish I used while caring and feeding my charges. I honestly didn’t even consider that to do otherwise would be an option. I also cleaned any other dirty dishes I found around. This was because I was being paid. And as much as I might have preferred to read a book or watch TV or whatever, I waited to do these things until all my other responsibilities were done.

2) Another category is where the babysitter simply places the dishes in the dishwasher without doing any pre-washing. I have noticed that this issue particularly plagues people under the age of 25 who have been led to believe that dishwashers are magical devices that obliterate all food on contact. Under this thinking, you can literally throw dishes into the dishwasher any which way you like and push a button and magic occurs. Somehow our babysitters have never noticed that our dishwasher is older than their parents and probably not up to the magic trick. It’s still an awesome machine but it can’t work wonders.

3) The final category is, in some ways, the one I find most intriguing. This is the group that hand washes the dishes but does so crappily. I’ll look over at the dish rack and be all “Hey! Awesome! Dishes washed! Dried! Ready to be put away!” And then when I put them away, I see that there are huge swaths of dried yogurt or spaghetti sauce on them. Like, we all might mess up our dishwashing time to time. I’m not perfect. I miss some spots. But these young adults seem to be doing little more than lightly running the dishes under some water before placing them on the drying rack.

Was there some major societal breakdown when it came to dishwashing in the last decade? I know I’m all “get off my lawn!” right now but I’m really sick of it. This is not a tremendously difficult skill to learn. Did their parents not teach them? Are they this bad at all house tasks? Are we doomed?

(Photo: Camilo Torres/Shutterstock)

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