Words by Shivani Sharma PZ ’29, Graphic by Ben Connolly PZ ’26

On Saturday, Nov. 1, the Benton Museum of Art hosted Claremont’s Zine Fest. The event consisted of roughly 40 exhibitors sharing their zines, photographs, cassettes, prints, and more. The overwhelming majority of these zines represented the artist’s personal journey through family, illness, money, and religion. 

It was here that I met a man by the name of John Dishwasher, who was handing out free copies of a zine titled “The Philosophy of John Dishwasher in 136 words.” He describes his intended audience on his website as those who are “interested in truths instead of illusions; if you value revolt instead of conformity; if you honor the chance-takers and the bold; if the big questions haunt you; if struggle and hardship inspire you; if you refuse to exploit or be exploited.”

In a previous life, John Dishwasher worked as a grade school English teacher in San Antonio, Texas, for around a year. From 1994 to 2016, he lived in 13 different cities and worked 22 different jobs in nearly every region in the United States. These consisted of several minimum wage jobs, including as a telemarketer, day laborer — and as his name suggests — a dishwasher. His resume describes many of the people he worked with, including parolees, high school students, working parents, and “unmistakable sociopaths,” all of varying nationalities and cultural backgrounds. 

He also lists a “claim to fame” for nearly every job, with notable highlights including “Once reached Keanu Reeves’ voice mail” and “Worked 60 weekends in a row and had a nervous breakdown; Rode bicycle to work in a blizzard.” Up until 2016, he continued to work minimum wage jobs until his part time jobs no longer made a significant contribution to his household income. 

John Dishwasher’s name is more of a lifestyle than a pseudonym. In “The Philosophy of John Dishwasher in 136 words,” he says, “you can live the life you want, you don’t need to know what they tell you.” His motivation for leaving what he describes as mainstream society was feeling as if conformity was not reality, and that he wanted to write about what was reality. 

In one of his essays, “Some Advice from the Poor to the Rich,” he talks about living below your means. For Dishwasher, people don’t really need the multimillion-dollar mansion and luxury cars, or even the single family home and Toyota Corolla. He talks about what it’s like to work a standard nine-to-five and deal with pay cuts, layoffs, and recessions when every year seems to be the worst financial crisis in history. When he wrote “The Philosophy of John Dishwasher in 136 Words,” he was working as a part time baker in a deli where it took him 25 hours a week to make 750 dollars. He contrasts his experience with the individuals who work three times the hours he does, who still stress about paying their bills and the economy collapsing. He asks, “Why can’t everyone just live like me?”

His solution to the “money problem” is to cut back on everything. He states that if everyone looked at how much they spend on car payments, insurance, and maintenance, then they could realize how many fewer hours they could work if they sold their car. The same idea applies to homeownership, eating out, etc. We could all just live on 750 dollars a month if we made the right choices.

The plus side to his way of living is the amount of free time he has. It’s still possible to pay the bills and have time to practice your art. For the remaining 45 hours in the week, that time can be spent  “for a bike ride in the sun on Tuesday afternoon … might read about the history of World War II, maybe. Or a book about astronomy.” It would just require giving up the stable life that’s encouraged. 

He makes an important distinction by saying, “You can just be a dishwasher,” as opposed to, “You can just be an artist or writer.” Having regular, minimum wage work still lets you “quiet quit” any other pursuit. He also explains that if he doesn’t like his boss or his work, there is almost always work available at “the bottom.”

His advice doesn’t seem particularly appealing to most; it may sound unrealistic and impractical for anyone who has a family to support, and can be especially hard to accept when tuition at the 5Cs cost more than 10 times his yearly income. It can feel very privileged to tell people to give up nearly everything that makes life comfortable and easy, in exchange for a lifestyle below your means and less stress about the corporate rat race. 

Even still, his advice holds merit. John Dishwasher explained that he can’t find a middle ground between working a stable but intense nine-to-five job and part-time minimum wage life. For Dishwasher, we don’t need to follow one person’s more extreme lifestyle choices. We should consider what we need to live the life we actually want, and how we can simplify our lives in the process.