In a political aside, this is why I support John Edwards.
Added: Turns out that Paul Krugman agrees with me on this one.
Turns out Bossman is more concerned that there be enough croissants until he gets back than concerned about me coming in to the bakery through the 2nd. I sat down and figured out a production schedule that will keep the bakery in croissants until he gets back, plus leave him with some wads of laminated dough in the freezer, and I think my last day will be the 29th. As i was doing my calculations, I realized that the total number of plain croissants I need to make for the next two-and-a-half weeks is smaller than the number I was making weekly during the height of the farmers' markets, which provided me with a certain amount of perspective.
Yesterday I made some torta russa, which is puff pastry in a large-muffin-sized cup (we use the paper cups in this picture, specifically the one at 2 o'clock, for monkey buns, as well as for the mini tortas), filled with a mixture of butter, eggs, lemon, sugar, and almonds. (In fact, I think the baker who developed this formula was the one who was at the bakery last spring and who told me my croissants are better than the ones he gets in Paris.) Bossman had started it but then had to make some deliveries, so I took care of it. We add some lemon curd to the bottom of this, which works out quite nicely and improves the lemoniness of the flavor; i think an orange filling with some not-too-sweet marmalade on the bottom would work, too. I would have baked them a little longer, but they were still quite lovely. I made some cannoli filling for the store. I helped Bossman coat mini rum balls in chocolate sprinkles. And then I helped with the gingerbread house kits, mostly by taping boxes. Bossman's dad had cut up the sheets of gingerbread (using patterns that are easily 25 years old) and bagged the toys (snowman, Santa, candy canes, etc.) we include in the boxes, and Bossman had made a big batch of royal icing, so he glued house bits together and stuck them on gold circles, while I put the house and a bag of toys into the cardboard box and taped it shut; we has a pretty efficient assembly line going. There's an order for 80 of them for today, and we got through about 40 or so before he ran out of icing, plus there were another 19 up on the shelf.
I was all full of ambition when I got home, too--I intended to do my laundry, but someone was removing laundry from all four washers, prior to refilling three of them. i settled for putting plastic over my bathroom window for insulation; finally replacing the shower curtain liner (I've had the replacement for two or three months, but hadn't gotten around to putting it up because I intended to get new shower curtain rings, ones that would be easier to open and close; as (a) it became clear THAT wasn't going to happen soon, and (b) the old liner got steadily more grody, I just used the old ones again); replacing two burned-out light bulbs in the dining area fixture (amazing how much more light you get when you have four working bulbs instead of two); sweeping the floor and doing some general tidying; collecting garbage, including the piles of catalogues I don't want; and making some dinner.
I did get the laundry going this morning early, and I talked to mom, who now has, on top of her other issues, an abdominal hernia, but they don't want to operate on it unless it strangulates because they're afraid that'll force her onto dialysis. I could also tell that she hadn't taken her lasix yet--she doesn't take it every day, but modulates her consumption based on how she's feeling. (Too much makes her sick, too.) When she's gone more than a day without it, the congestive heart failure kicks up a notch and she starts coughing some, which is how I could tell. Oy. At least she's started getting a little exercise (on the treadmill two days in each of the past two weeks, plus her volunteer stint at the Crayola factory), so perhaps my nagging on that score sunk in. My mother also informed me that I should be there for Christmas, no matter that it's the busiest week of the year at the bakery.
I wish I didn't have so many conflicts about visiting my family. On one hand, flying is cheap enough and quick enough that even I feel a little ridiculous taking the train--but I still hate to fly, which just reduces the enjoyment of any trip. And, much as I love my family, they have never, ever spent a holiday with me: not when I lived in Philadelphia, not since I've moved here in 1985. Never once in 30 years. Instead, I get lectures on how I shouldn't spend the day alone. Who fucking cares? One of my best Christmases was the one where I saw four movies in two days--by myself. Loved it. Obviously my mother is in no condition to travel now, especially in the middle of winter, but you get my point.
In any case, I end up fibrillating about when to go, how to go, and on and on, and on top of that I have to make it a point to let go of the resentment--that is not baggage I want to take with me. I did finally make a decision today and made train reservations, with sleeping accommodations, which increases the price significantly but improves the quality of the trip; it also means I can bring my laptop without reading the fine print and bring as many, and whatever size, bottles of shampoos and moisturizers and body lotion and whatever as I want. I can also bring the poster I had framed for my parents (I'm on the poster, in my chef clothes, so I'll be lucky if they put it in the garage) rather than trying to package and mail it.
Speaking of the poster, Friend helped me out significantly today. He had some vehicle errands to run, despite the snow, so he offered to meet me at the place where I had the poster framed so i wouldn't have to sherpa the stuff on trains and buses. From there we went to a nearby drinking establishment to have a beverage while we waited for the restaurant to open at 4:30. We also made plans to celebrate his birthday (which is Friday, but he's playing hockey that night, so we'll celebrate on Thursday, which means I can deliver baked goods that he can take to his family over the weekend) and christmas--he'll be back for christmas eve, and he's working that day, so I can concoct a dessert and he can come fetch me and we can hang out at his place in front of the fireplace and/or the TV and drink with abandon. On christmas day we may do a LOTR marathon, coupled with some fancy-ass cooking (we might even cook Thumper) and possibly a trip to a suburb to hear the band we're intending to see on new year's eve (although there's every possibility we'll be way too comfy on the couch to contemplate that expedition). Then we both work for a couple of days--different ones, in that he has vacation days to use up and I have to work until the 29th--get together for the new year, and I head out on the 3rd and get back on the 10th, whereupon I start whatever it is I'm going to be doing. All in all, I think there's a good blend in there.
I don't know how my coworkers and Bossman are reacting to my leaving. He seems okay with it, but he never shows anything, and his wife went out of her way to thank me for "staying," and she was complimentary and appreciative, so that was nice. (I figured she'd be all one way or the other, and I was glad it was the one way. The other might have become unpleasant.) I've told Johnnie, who looked surprised and dismayed, but I haven't told Phil or Artie yet; Bossman may do that tomorrow when I'm not there. I know that Phil will miss me: I help him out, a lot, and it's generally wordless, in the sense that I just step in, lend a hand with a particular part of a process, then go back to whatever I was doing. A few tasks we've managed to streamline in ways that accomplish the task much more quickly than he can do alone and more quickly than other people manage. It's subtle, but it's there, and I know he recognizes it.
The same is true with Bossman, for that matter; there are dozens of small ways that I lend a hand--fix an invoice for the delivery guy; make cannoli filling or pastry cream (the latter of which I hate, but will do); check in the dairy order or the dry goods order; finish some task, like the tortas yesterday; fill the macaron trays in the store; and, of course, magically produce 2000 to 4500 croissants per week without anyone else needing to think about it. It's true that I had Lole for the summer, and I would have been screwed without that, but even then noone else needed to be involved. In some ways, Friday morning is a perfect example: I didn't have the ingredient I needed, so I had to occupy myself, and I managed to do that in productive ways. I'm sure this takes different forms in different environments--the Tart probably has a different perspective than I have, for example, because she works a line and I don't--but I think the general principles apply in every single workplace. Some people make themselves useful, and will find ways to do so as needed, while other people will . . . not. I really enjoy being in a workplace where the former greatly outnumber the latter, in part because that goads many people in the latter category to do more or better than they might otherwise do and in part because it means everyone really is working together, even if we're all doing different tasks. Sometimes I marvel at how much we manage to produce at the bakery.
At the moment, however, I'm marveling that I've managed to keep my eyes open long enough to finish this. I'm fading fast, even though it's only 8:45, and I have shlepping to do tomorrow, so I'm going to give up and go to bed.
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7 comments:
Yeah, but you didn't explain what I want to know: Will you be making the occasional batch of croissants at home and sharing? I would absolutely pay the market rate for your chocolate, almond, and plain croissants. But not all the time, because then I'd counteract the gym workouts and become enormous.
The folks at the bakery will surely be missing you when you're gone!
I long to work with people like you. Where I work, policy dictates that we NOT help others when we have down time. This is called "segregation of duties." HugeCorp thinks this is a way to keep us all honest (or something -- who really knows?), but in practice it reduces productivity by about half. The good news is you get a promotion if you look good sitting around doing nothing.
I have a union job, Larry, and, so, am not allowed to help anyone else. I cannot, technically, wash my own mixer bowl when stewarding is backed up or fetch my own dishes from the banquet kitchen! Technically. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The idea is that if I do work for stewarding, I'm "stealing" their work. If everyone washed their own mixer bowl (pot, hotel pan, whatever) someone from stewarding would be out of a job. It does keep an employer honest to an extent and really works in my favor, if you think about it. Yeah, making pastry is pretty specialized, but plating stuff could be done by anyone with some training. And then I'd be out of (half) a job.
Narya, I have a very nice orange marmalade recipe from our current menu if you'd like it just for kicks.
Yes, please! Unless/until I find an actual job (or set of jobs) I will have time on my hands, so making marmalade is an option.
Orange, yes, I am always happy to share! I don't know that I'll try making croissants without a sheeter, but I'll be doing other things for sure!
Larry, I think it's complicated, and not just for the reasons the Tart outlines. Right now I'm lucky, in that nearly everyone just plain works hard--but even among those guys there's some sniping. I can't tell how much of it is serious, because i don't speak Spanish. also, the Tart is wrong about plating, as I demonstrated repeatedly in class ;-)
Ms. Tart - Thanks for the tutorial. I'm down with labor unions. There is no other way to cope with the concentrated power of management.
I work in an office, and we are not in a union. (California is a "right to work" state, which means "right to be worked over," but that's another story.) The segregation of duties to which I referred is for the good of the company, not the workers. The thinking is, in accounting, the less I know about what anyone else is doing, the less chance there is for me to steal the money (It is assumed that we are all trying to figure out ways to steal the money). Advantage: HugeCorp. Also, if each of us is compartmentalized in a tiny little role, none of us will ever be able to run the operation, so the "managers" trained elsewhere and brought in from outside won't be challenged, and company policy will be more easily enforced. Advantage: HugeCorp, although I think they'd be better off if they let workers broaden their scope. Finally, limiting each person to a narrowly defined set of functions makes it easier to plug in a different worker if somebody quits or gets fired. Advantage: HugeCorp once again.
Since our little company was acquired by HugeCorp I have seen cooperation and productivity fade as everybody withdrew into their cubicles, fearful for their jobs and jealous of the rote tasks assigned to them, and I'm pretty crabby about it. It's a stupid way to run an enterprise and I'm sure it signals the beginning of the end for HugeCorp, if not the Empire itself.
Regarding your specific example, if everyone had time to wash their own mixing bowl, someone from stewarding should be out of a job, because that job is just a make-work gig, which is one of the bad things about unions.
I'm not gonna give you that last one, Larry--"make-work" gigs are by no means the province of unions. You can argue that they are sometimes the province of organized crime and that unions have been a common means of implementing them, but I'd argue that's more complicated.
My dad ran a union shop for years (and was a union member himself, which is precisely how he and my mother have not been bankrupted by the various medical crap they've got going on) and he always said one of the advantages was that if he got someone who couldn't do the job, he'd send the person back and get another one.
I don't want to argue, N. As I said, I'm pro-union. But a job that's not needed, that must be protected by others' abstention from doing something that they can readily do, is a fake job. It might feel good in a negotiation to stick it to The Man with requirements like this, but there are good reasons why featherbedding is a bad idea, and you know it/them.
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