History Main / PeelingPotatoes

* The 1942 ''DonaldDuck'' cartoon [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Trooper Sky Trooper]] where he joins the Army Air Corps, and has to peel potatoes after he nearly gets his [[DrillSergeantNasty training officer]] killed in a mishap.

** Combat soldiers in the [[IsraelisWithInfraRedMissiles IDF]] tend to have the same opinion for similar reasons--kitchen duty is usually easier and less unpleasant then say, guard duty, cleaning or maintenance work, and provides access food outside of meal time. Soldiers in supporting roles tend to have the opposite opinion; their regular duty isn't so unpleasant that the kitchen is an improvement.

* Happened to Alan Scott, the GoldenAge GreenLantern, when he was in the army. Unable to explain his absence without blowing his secret identity, he was assigned potato peeling as a punishment.

* Rimmer and Lister were forced to do this in an episode of RedDwarf after ticking their captain off. Lister has the "great" idea of getting out of having to peel the literal mountain of potatoes by having a special virus eat the potato skins. Unfortunately for the duo, the virus also eats clothes.

* ''Li'l Mell'' had Mell and Sergio put on potato-peeling duty when the homeschooled kid Mell brought for show and tell started a revolution against the school. Sergio lampshaded this by wondering where all the potatoes came from. (The cafeteria ladies. They joined the rebellion on the students' side.) Then Mell started a competing revolution, armed with the two potato peelers.

[[folder:Film]]
* Used as a punishment in ''{{Tigerland}}'' for Army draftees during the Vietnam War.

[[folder:Video Games]]
* While the actual event didn't happen in game, in ''VideoGame/WingCommander II'', three of the survivors of the ''Tiger's Claw'' reminisce about a prank committed by a pilot from the first game who didn't live to the second that landed him doing this for a week.
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[[folder:Real Life]]
* Still very much TruthInTelevision around much of the world, as even in the USA it started to become a DeadHorseTrope only in [[TheSeventies the '70s]] when the military started to outsource the service functions like feeding the personnel. Many other armies still do it in-house, providing ample possibility for this trope.
** Even in ships at sea, where you don't have civilians to outsource the potato peeling to, its not used as a punishment detail anymore; everybody (below a certain rank) just gets to take a turn.
* Interestingly, in Soviet and Russian army kitchen patrol always was considered a ''privilege'' and not the punishment, as it allowed the soldier to sit in warm kitchen doing tedious but easy job, and not work his ass off doing whatever the seniors saddled him with. Also it basically let the soldier to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants, and not a set menu in the set hours only.
** Combat soldiers in the [[IsraelisWithInfraRedMissiles IDF]] tend to have the same opinion for similar reasons--kitchen duty is usually easier and less unpleasant then say, guard duty, cleaning or maintenance work, and provides access food outside of meal time. Soldiers in supporting roles tend to have the opposite opinion; their regular duty isn't so unpleasant that the kitchen is an improvement.
[[/folder]]

* A nonmilitary but definitely punishment version: one of the TenchiMuyo OVA episodes had Ryoko, Aeka, and Mihoshi doing this as their share of repairing the extensive damage to a hot spring resort, with varying results. Ryoko did a hack job on hers with questionable accuracy, Aeka primly carved each millimetre of skin with painstaking deliberation, and Mihoshi outstripped both easily (and boasted about it).
* In the second season of {{Strike Witches}}, Gertrud gets sentenced to this for violating orders.

* Seen in the French-Belgian comic series ''Les Tuniques Bleues''.
* Spoofed in the LuckyLuke album "Le Vingtieme de Cavalerie" (lit. the 20th Cavalry), after an Indian raid during which the food stores are burned. Luke sees four men sitting on the ground around a bucket making peeling hand motions. When he queries the Sergeant, he is informed that life in the cavalry goes on, potatoes or no potatoes. The sergeant then berates the men for not pretending to peel thinly enough and tells them that the colonel will pretend to inspect the pretend peels personally.

** [[SoWhatYouAreSaying In other words]], InSovietRussia, potato peels YOU!

* In a ScroogeMcDuck story, Donald and his nephews were stuck in a ship, condemned to peel potatoes until the return to Duckburg... and to make things worse, with a counting parrot that started to see how many were there!

* [[SchlockMercenary Schlock, Kevyn and Brad]] were [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-09-01 sentenced to this once]]. Schlock, being a BlobMonster, peeled them with digestive juices rather than the peeler.

* [[SchlockMercenary Schlock, Kevyn and Brad]] were sentenced to this once. Schlock, being a BlobMonster, peeled them with digestive juices rather than the peeler.

''The'' stock punishment in the military in fiction, presumably for its instant-recognizability factor as opposed to, say, digging holes in the ground (read: latrines).

-->Kevyn: "Tell ''no one'' hew we finished so quickly."

-->--'''Rolf''', ''[[EdEddNEddy Ed, Edd N Eddy]]''

* While the actual event didn't happen in game, in ''WingCommander II'', three of the survivors of the ''Tiger's Claw'' reminisce about a prank committed by a pilot from the first game who didn't live to the second that landed him doing this for a week.

* In the ''EdEddNEddy'' episode "Will Work For Ed", Ed gets a job on Rolf's farm, and his first task is to peel a ''huge'' mountain of potatoes.

[[quoteright:320:[[ClassicDisneyShorts http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MickeyPotatoBin-SteamboatWillie_6218.jpg]]]]

* The 1942 DonaldDuck cartoon [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Trooper Sky Trooper]] where he joins the Army Air Corps, and has to peel potatoes after he nearly gets his [[DrillSergeantNasty training officer]] killed in a mishap.

* Used as a punishment in ''Tigerland'' for Army draftees during the Vietnam War.

* Still very much TruthInTelevision around much of the world, as even in the USA it started to become a DeadTrope only in 70-es when the military started to outsource the service functions like feeding the personnel. Many other armies still do it in-house, providing ample possibility for this trope.

* InOtherWords in Soviet Russia, potato peels YOU.

-->''Behold the potato! Bow to this fruit of the earth, and then peel it as if it were the last task in your miserable life!''

It has many names. KitchenPatrol. SpudBashing. Whatever it's called, it seems you CantGetAwayWithNuthin, and once you're caught it's a SmashCut to sitting on the floor of a drab kitchen somewhere next to a sack of potatoes, peeling them one at a time.

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[[quoteright:320:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MickeyPotatoBin-SteamboatWillie_6218.jpg]]

* Poor Jim in Treasure Planet constantly gets stuck with this job.