I've always thought clothes washers washed clothes but dishwashers don't actually wash dishes and everybody knows it. I thought it was just a universally shared joke that everybody was in on, like "Grape Nuts contain neither grapes not nuts, and dishwashers don't actually wash dishes because of course they don't."

Only now I'm beginning to think I've been out of the loop.

I think you've been very unlucky with dishwashers.

Yeah, you have definitely been out of the loop. I’ve used at least 5 different dishwashers in the past 20 years, and never had a problem with them actually washing dishes after just scraping off the food. Once in a while I’ll have an issue with something stuck on a utensil that was nested with another in the silverware bin, but that’s a loading problem not a dishwasher defect.