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Work Off the Debt: Difference between revisions
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[[File:helga-arnold-dishes.jpg|link=Hey Arnold!|frame| Oh, shut up and rinse...]]
{{quote|"''I am not gonna go back in there, tell them the truth, and wind up washing dishes. <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Gilligan Cut]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> I can't believe I told them the truth, and I wound up washing dishes.''"|'''Helga''', ''[[Hey Arnold!]]!''}}▼
▲{{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 return—usually (but not always) a restaurant. However, they are unable to pay for some reason. The owner is called out, and agrees to let them work off their debt, almost always by washing dishes.
Even though most modern restaurants have machines to wash dishes, the unfortunate victims will invariably have to wash up by hand. Customers in [[Real Life|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.
[[Fridge Logic|Usually unexplained]] is how the restaurant was going to get the dishes clean if no deadbeats showed up that night. Did their current dishwasher just quit / call in sick / die or did they just tell him to take the night off so the protagonists can work off their debt?
For some reason, this is far from becoming a [[Discredited Trope]]. No doubt a [[Shockingly Expensive Bill]] will be involved.
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* In ''[[Peach Girl]]'', Kairi Okayasu gets his wallet stolen by street punks at one point. He doesn't realize it until he gets the (rather cheap) bill at a restaurant, and winds up washing dishes.
* In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', Black is forced to work for White after she shows him how much she paid to cover for the scenery and equipment he destroyed. Which is just fine for White, as she really needed his Tepig for a movie shooting.
** In a slight subversion, White proves to be a [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] as she doesn't expect Black to pay off the entirety of the debt. She plans to let him go after just a few more shootings. And this trope is further played with when it turns out that Tep and Gigi make so much money together that Black has most of the original debt payed off anyways. After that revelation, Black and White form a sort of partnership since their respective goals work out better if they stick together
* ''[[Spice and Wolf]]'' subverts this a little. While Lawrence insists that Holo sticks with him until she's paid off her debt, and she agrees to do so, it's merely their excuse for traveling together, and it doesn't fool anyone. Except Amarti, who assumes that Lawrence is tying her down. They set him straight, but not before lightening his purse quite a bit.
* {{spoiler|Sakuya}} from ''[[Sensual Phrase]]'' has this in his backstory, as {{spoiler|his [[Parental Substitute]] raised him as a musician to pay the huge debt that his Sakuya's Reiko left behind after her death.}}
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[[Category:Bargain Tropes]]
[[Category:Money Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Poverty Tropes]]
[[Category:A Slave to the Index]]
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