Work Off the Debt: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|"''I am not gonna go back in there, tell them the truth, and wind up washing dishes. [[[Gilligan Cut]]] I can't believe I told them the truth, and I wound up washing dishes.''"|'''Helga''', ''[[Hey Arnold!]]!''}}
Characters go to a place where they are expected to pay money for something they have already consumed and can't
Even though most modern restaurants have machines to wash dishes, the unfortunate victims will invariably have to wash up by hand. Customers in real restaurants are also generally not careless enough to leave their wallets or checkbooks at home. Even if they did, the owner would most likely allow them to call home and have someone else bring in their money for them. It also goes further than that, if you're a regular customer and they know you, the owner will simply let you come back with the money later.
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* Subverted in ''[[Fables]]'', where Flycatcher works off his crimes by being a janitor, but keeps getting caught doing the same crime again and has his sentence extended. He does this because he likes being a janitor; it makes him feels fulfilled. The subversion was subverted by Bill Willingham when Flycatcher was turned into [[Tinkerbell Jesus]].
** Bit more to it than that: {{spoiler|Bigby was deliberately harsh in his enforcement of their Masquerade because as long as Flycatcher is on community service he doesn't have to resume his search for his lost family and thus take the risk of remembering what became of them.}}
* Used on several occasions in [[Donald Duck]] and [[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck|Uncle Scrooge]] comics, usually to add insult to injury when Uncle Scrooge is temporarily denied access to his fortune because of unfortunate events. In a variation unique to Scrooge, he and the rest of the ducks once end up washing dishes even though he has the
** At least a small part of the trope is justifiable in this case: The majority of the duck comics genuinely take place before dishwashers were in widespread use.
** Scrooge constantly uses Donald's debts to make him do stuff for him.
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* ''A Pup Named [[Scooby Doo]]'': Shaggy and Scooby also had to wash dishes to pay for a restaurant bill. {{spoiler|They washed so many dishes the waiter even gave them some money after they finished}}.
* In an episode of ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'', Jim and Peter, along with Bob the Goldfish and one of Bob's minions, spend about a thousand years of "pseudo-time" washing dishes in a restaurant outside time. And then a further 150 pseudo-years (15%) when Jim insists they have tip the waiter (but the others refuse to do more just to tip the valet).
* Subverted in ''[[Futurama]]'' when it looks like Elzar is about to propose
* ''[[The Perils of Penelope Pitstop]]'', episode "Bad Fortune in a Chinese Fortune Cookie": After Chugaboom damages the restaurant, the Ant Hill Mob have to work as waiters and dishwashers.
* [[The Simpsons|Bart Simpson]] has worked as both a carnie and a burlesque house doorman, and possibly more.
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