What It's Like to Work in a Bakery

I had never considered the possibility of working in a bakery. When I applied to the supermarket, I saw myself stocking shelves or working the register, not being paid to bake cookies. Nevertheless, I was psyched when I was told they were putting me in the bakery, especially since I'd taken up baking to pass the time when I was unemployed. I was thrilled at the prospect of getting paid to do just that.

I mostly expected to be in charge or packaging and stocking the baked goods, but on my first day they had be bake hundreds of chocolate chip cookies. Really, that's all I did. Well, more specifically, I put frozen, shaped pieces of cookie dough onto trays, and put the trays onto a rack, and put the rack into the oven. After the cookies went into the oven, they had me go on break (it was a short shift), and when I got back, it was time to put the cookies into plastic tubs, label them, and put them on display tables. I think there was time to kill after that, and in my whole period of employment, free time was filled by washing dishes.

There were many fun parts of the job. I baked cookies, breads, pies, etc., and frosted cupcakes and snack cakes. I never did work my way up to cake decorator, that job was reserved for the very experienced bakery clerks. Just as well, I'm not sure I could have handled the responsibility. I was allowed, after much practice, to write on cakes. Now that's a skill I look forward to showing off if anyone would let me. Writing on cakes was one of the very few ways I interacted with customers directly. I also sliced bread on demand and took cake orders. For the most part, my work was behind the scenes, which I preferred to constantly working at a service counter like I did at Cold Stone. I had to be careful though, with the way the bakery was shaped I didn't always know there was a customer. I wished we had a bell or something for people to ring for service. I was sometimes called to the bakery via intercom when I was on break. Not cool.

Possibly the best part of the job was the break flexibility. We were hardly ever so busy that I wasn't given a break; that only happened once and I was only mildly dehydrated after the shift. I had the option of breaking my half hour break into two fifteen minute breaks, which I took - one break four hours into my shift for a meal, and another break two or three hours later. It's not like the job was that tiring, sure there was nowhere to sit down but that's true with just about any service job.

The biggest part of my job was setup, which involved putting breads, rolls, bagels, donuts, and a couple other breakfast pastries onto trays, and putting those trays onto racks, so they could be proofed and baked first thing the next morning. The bakery opens at 5am so everything can be baked and packaged before the store opened, thankfully they never made me come in earlier than 7, and even better, my shifts never went later than 9pm. I was given a sheet telling how much of everything they needed me to set up, and I was set to go. After a few shifts doing setup they felt comfortable leaving me alone in the bakery to do it. I liked being alone. I didn't do anything against the rules, except for sneaking the occasional cookie from the plastic container we left out for the young customers. Setup required a lot of heavy lifting, which I could handle and may have contributed to the killer biceps I have today. The part I hated was going into the freezer, where we kept just about everything. I hate being cold, and my sweatshirt only helped a little. Sometimes customers would even request I go into the freezer for something.

Of all the jobs I've had, the bakery job had the smallest number of customer annoyances. The biggest problem I had was being stopped on my way to or from the bakery and being asked where things were. I knew where the crusty breads and freshly baked cookies were, but I was just as clueless as they were in regards to queries about soy beans or dog food. I felt guilty having to explain that I didn't know because I only worked in bakery because I knew the customers expected everyone to know where everything was, which was reasonable, wanting the employees to be knowledgeable. Unfortunately I did not fulfill those expectations. Real customer horror stories were very rare, and generally consisted of senior citizens getting angry when we didn't have what they wanted.

Despite the lack of benefits and just-above-minimum wage I received for the job, it's been the best job I've had so far. I really wish I could have a job like it in Boston so I could get paid to bake cookies and frost cupcakes year-round.