So as I mentioned, I am awaiting a work permit and unfortunately not working right now.  BUT, I did have a job at a bakery for about 5 days. 

After a morning of job hunting and resumes, I was walking down the street and passed a bakery with a help wanted sign in the window.  Now, normally I would never bother applying for this kind of job, I went to college and was under the impression that if you go to college you don’t have to work at places where you have to touch food.  But in my current state of desperation I decided to apply.

So I fill out the application and the man at the counter said his wife would be out to talk to me shortly.  He was probably the thinnest man I’ve ever seen (odd for working at a bakery, I thought).  So his wife comes out, she’s a cute older woman who I found friendly and nice.  Later, I would remember that Hitler was charasmatic too.

Beginning of a long story short, I go for an interview the next day, give her the forms for hiring an immigrant, and she says I can start the next day and that she will pay me cash for the time being because she’s “allowed to do that”.  Now, I like to do things legally, but who the hell would say no to that when your rent is due and your husband is in graduate school and you’re bored and the lady says she can do that???

Thursday: Day One

Lady Boss is in charge, Husband Boss is the baker.  Lady Boss (LB) informs me that she will start me slow, and as I learn one task, we will move on to the next.  Fair enough, but task one was putting doughnuts on a tray.  And it took me 9 hours to learn that task I guess because that’s all I was allowed to do all day.  So I put all these disgusting doughnuts on trays and was showed around the back of the store. 

After day one I come to learn that LB is probably the cheapest woman in the world.  I don’t know if anyone watches Arrested Development, but if you do… think Carl Weathers times 20.  There was a crumb bucket to put miscellaneous crumbs that we collected off trays, and a nut bucket to put wayward nut crumbs that fell off long johns, were scraped off the table, whatever.  “Nut Bucket” would actually be a good name for that hellhole.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that LB requested light pants and light colored tops for my work attire… this will come into play later.

So after day one I was tired, covered in icing, gagged at  the smell of sugar…

Friday: Day Two

So I get to work Friday morning.  I have on white pants and a white shirt (which kills me because I NEVER wear white, or pastels).  LB likes my outfit.  Why, thank you…

I spend the day washing pans, loading doughnuts onto the pans, collecting crumbs for the respective buckets, and also get to learn how to put an f-ing doughnut in a bag.  I’m so honored that LB deemed me ready for this task.  I am still, however, not allowed to talk to customers.  Despite my 10 years of retail experience, I cannot talk to an old man who wants a loaf of bread.  And I certainly cannot put the bread into a bag unless LB tells me to do so.  Whatever, she said she was “particular”.

So throughout the day she fusses and fusses over how I’m doing things.  Her husband tells me to dip doughnuts one way, so I do it, and then she comes back and freaks out about how I’m dipping the doughnuts!  I cannot believe I am having this conversation with her.  Countless other incidents like this happen, along with me getting yelled at for putting a danish in a bag before she tells me.   I’m sorry, but if a person walks in, I’m going to say hello.  And if they immediately say “I’d like a cherry danish”, I’m going to put it in the bag.  Not go and ask permission.  I think I can handle putting a danish in a bag.

Oh, and instead of tongs to pick things up we used old (and I mean OLD) bread bags.  So I have to place my hand in a bread bag, pick up whatever I’m getting, and put it in 0ne of three choices:

1.  an old box from the grocery store… used for doughnuts, cookies, whatever is a bulk order.  Most of the boxes say “lettuce” but I support recycling.

2.  a paper bag… which must be opened a certain way.  Paper bags are for whatever can be squeezed in them.  Use the smallest one possible, but don’t move up to the next size unless there is apple turnover spilling out the top.

3.  Bakery boxes… sounds like the obvious first choice, but no.  Those are expensive, so even though there were millions stockpiled in the back, they were used sparingly.

Saturday: Day Three

LB, myself, and two high school students are working today.  I am still limited to putting doughnuts on trays and putting doughnuts in bags (ONLY when instucted).  But, unfortunately, I am wearing the incorrect shade of blue.  It was an azure top, I guess if you want to get specific.  But it was wrong!!!  I guess “light colors” can mean a lot of different things.

So I spend the day scraping icing off pans and putting it back into a bucket of icing, decorating gingerbread men, putting my hands in bread bags, and staring blankly when customers ask me for something.  Oh, and keep in mind that during all this, LB is constantly correcting the way I put doughnuts on the pans and everything else.  “Just use your hands”, “don’t dry the pans now”, “don’t throw out nut crumbs”, “use this brush with three bristles left in it to clean off the bread machine”. 

Then I got paid, and went home, and figured she was just weird, and I could put up with it.  To take a quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas… “then things got weird”

Monday: Day Four

So I wear a pink t-shirt with a scoop neck with a yellow tank top underneath it.  “Too naked” for LB and she is clearly disgusted.  Now, this top comes to about an inch below my collarbones, and I am NOT a well endowed girl.  So LB goes on for about a half hour lecturing me about light colors and describing in detail the kinds of outfits she expects me to go out and buy especially for this shit job.  Keep in mind I am still barely allowed in the front of the store anyway!

A new woman comes to work today after a three week vacation.  She is just as bad as LB, so now I have 3 people telling me 3 different ways to do 3 different things, and none of them are right.  AND it’s a matter of putting doughnuts on a tray!  I think I can handle that. 

The new woman says no to everything I start to do to keep busy.  Every time I do something that I was told to do by one person, another person comes and yells at me for doing it!  I am losing my mind.

A customer comes in and orders a brownie, I go to put the brownie in a bag, but new lady tells me to wait.  “Are you eating it now?”  “Probably”  “Well are you going to hold it and eat it right away?”  “Well, yeah, I guess”

Okay… so I am instructed to take the brownie in my bread-bag clad hand, and take it to the customer, and let her take the brownie from my hand.  No napkin, no wax paper, and certainly no bag.  That’s apparently too expensive.  I was embarrassed and the customer was clearly weirded out. 

I sweep… don’t do that now

I wash pans…  you should be sweeping now

I make cream long johns… you should be decorating gingerbread men

The nitpicking is making me hear voices in my head, I never knew working at a bakery required the same timing and methods as launching a spaceship.  Good Lord. 

I drop a tray of chocolate doughnuts… they are sold anyway.  Disgusting….

Tuesday: Day Five… Fin

I wear a green, conservative top to work.  LB has a problem again.  Green is too dark I guess:

“LB, I am sorry, but I am wearing what I have, doing the best I can.  I thought this was light colored”

“I don’t like it”

“Well I’m sorry, but I don’t have the budget to go out and buy a whole new pastel wardrobe for you”

“That’s fine but blah blah blah” 

She makes me nervous, so as I’m washing my hands (I’m the only person who does this) and I reach under the sink out of habit (that’s where I keep my dish towels at home) and quickly shut the door and move to the correct spot where we keep clean towels.  I am physically grabbed and told “we dont use dirty towels to dry our hands, we use the clean towels to do that”

“I know that LB” I said.  I do happen to know that it’s best to use a clean towel to dry my hands… and was doing so before she even corrected me!

I told her that she was making me nervous with all her fussing, that I was capable of doing the simple tasks she had me do, and didn’t need correcting all the time.  She called over the other lady and they both started telling me all this nonsense… I quit… it got ugly, I went back at three for my final pay, and got the silent treatment.

So this doesn’t sound like a big deal, probably.  But unfortunately I do not have the words (or the memory, thanks to all the pot needed to help me recover from this experience)  to describe the five days there in perfect detail.   I will just say this, I have work A LOT of weird jobs, and met  A LOT of truly crazy people.  And I have never worked for such an anal retentive, psychotic, cheap, slave – driving woman in my entire life.  No word can describe the oddities I witnessed while there, and unless you have been under LB’s thumb yourself you will never know the horrors of that job.