I stared at the line of customers coiling out the door of Panera. They were all here for one thing: food. There were posters obnoxiously placed throughout the restaurant giving them reason to believe that there was one reason that we, the employees were here: “bread is our passion.” We’re bakers. Bread is our culture. We bake. Bread is our soul. Bread is who we are. Many believe we make bread here, but really- it is the bread that makes us. Yes, we at Panera go home and sleep on a loaf of bread bed. We dream of whole wheat and Ciabatta dancing hand in hand through a field of grain, where the rivers flow with preservatives and money. For me- I had always been okay with bread. Never really had a problem with it. Me and bread were on pretty good terms. But it was no more than the walls of a sandwich, really. I would never say I was passionate about bread. It occurred to me while baking some bread, and by “baking” I mean receiving pre-made frozen dough from a truck each morning and putting it in an oven, that there are many components- or ingredients to a chain-bakery's success. As the heat of the oven thawed the bread, I unloaded my thoughts. Each of these ingredients is what the people that work there bring to it- and none of them really benefit from it any more than minimum wage (or so I thought at this point). And in the end, just as the bread is devoured and digested by a happy customer, our team of ingredients would come together ultimately to make the corporation richer as we suffered the grunge work of the process.
“Why do people even want to come here?” I said to Clarise, the girl working the cash register next to me. She was unusually chipper despite the fact that she had devoted far too much of her life already to a chain-bakery. “Because it’s good foood,” she said in her usual way of accentuating the ‘oo’ sounds in her words. And when she did, she’d curve her lips like she was mooing. She was one of the most tolerable of the people I had to work with. I could appreciate Clarise. When I first started working at Panera, she was the person who had told me she was going to train me, and then actually trained me. The same could not be said for Mary.
On my very first day I was handed off to a girl who was convinced she was as bad ass as an ex-convict. Every time she gave me sass, I wanted to remind her that she would probably be carded at a PG-13 rated film. She overviewed the basics with me. She presented toilet cleaning as though it was rocket ship building- only far more advanced. When I showed her I could competently Windex the mirror, I gained a small bit of her respect. It was enough for her to start talking to me like a human.
“So you have a boyfriend?” She acted uninterested, not looking up from her wiping.
“Yeah I do.” I told her.
“How long you been dating?”
“Well we just started seeing each other in March, so only a few months or so.” I said.
“Does he live around here?”
“Uh, no. He’s from Pittsburgh.” She seemed shocked.
“How’d you meet then?”
“At college.” I said. And then she drew her head back and squinted as though I suddenly smelled terrible.
“ You’re in college? Shit. You don’t look like you’re in college. I thought you were younger than me. “
“Thank you?” I said.
“Boys are all the same. I’m sure he’s all sweet and shit on the phone. But in a month or so he’s gonna be fucking some other girl.” I had no idea how to respond to this. A second ago we were developing a cure for cancer via bathroom cleaning. I wished we could go back to that. Even if it did mean being patronized by a 15 year old. I tried to change the subject.
“So.. are you thinking about college yet ?”
“If nothin’ gets in my way.” She said like she desperately wanted me to ask what she meant.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“I might be pregnant.” With the way she said it, she could have easily been saying “I might be getting a cold.” I was done trying to salvage any hopes for normalcy of this first day. So I just went with it. Apparently she was dating some jackass who thought she was “good enough to fuck but not good enough to take to the prom.” I asked her why she put up with someone like that, and she said “Because I love him.” All in five minutes I discovered she might be pregnant, had poor self-esteem, and that she was also an orphan. The last discovery allowed me to excuse her behavior. By the end of the night I had made my way onto her good side, perhaps only because I was older than she was.
No fellow associate at Panera was without an interesting story. There was Matt. He certainly wasn’t the first gay guy I have ever met. When you’re into theatre and the arts, it’s 100% unavoidable to have a few gay best friends. Matt was quite possibly the most flamboyant human being ever to exist. He’d stand in the back and do dishes while scream singing Carrie Underwood in 300 different keys. We’d try to hold our tongues around him, because somehow anything you said to him was turned into an anti-gay comment.
“Matt. Can you cut this sandwich evenly?”
“Just cuz I am gay, doesn’t mean you can tell me I can’t cut a sandwich.”
“Matt, can you stop singing that song so loudly? The customers can hear you out front and they’re complaining.”
“DAMN. People ALWAYS hatin’ on the gay guy.” Since I really didn’t care about the customer’s well-being, or how much profit I was raking in for the owner of Panera who is undoubtedly neither a baker, nor passionate about bread, I just observed from afar. I didn’t risk sounding homophobic by saying hello to him.
There was Linda. My manager. She was a lesbian. She and Matt were best friends. I guess they understood each other. If anyone said anything to Matt, she’d come racing in to his aid. Linda was one of the most sickening human beings I have ever seen. Linda followed the fairy tale theme, as her personality was equally horrid. Like most heterosexuals, I find it hard to imagine being attracted to any gender other than my opposite. But Linda had a way of reiterating this feeling. She was gigantic, always greasy. Her hair never seemed washed, and stuck out sporadically atop an egg shaped face that always appeared to be melting. A line from Shakespeare’s "The Comedy of Errors" came to mind when I was around her, which was “she’s the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter; if she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.” She never tried to overcompensate for this fact by being nice either. But despite this, I took pity on her on the day I realized she was so unaware of the rest of our hatred of her. She asked me to make her a sandwich. Any restaurant manager that is knowingly despised would never be dumb enough to ask one of their bitter underdogs to make food for them. I decided that amiability, appearance, and wits weren’t quite her strong suits. But I hoped there was something else inside the woman who always came to work hung over and then dared to yell at us for placing a tomato slice crooked.
Customers are also, of course another main ingredient to the ‘bread’ that is a business and the business of bread. They are more than that, actually. Without customers, the business would not continue. There would be no greedy hands pointing and ordering. There would be no profit. There would be no paychecks. Without our customers, there would be no bread. Customers will never let you forget this either. This obvious realization manifests itself in many forms. I will first describe the forms, then provide a short dialogue that exemplifies them for better understanding. 1.) Ordering items that are not, never have, and never will be on the menu. No matter how ridiculous the item demanded may sound- in their mind, it makes perfect sense. Note: A dramatization
“Excuse me, do you have an elephant –hoof sandwich?”
“I’m sorry. No we don’t.”
“What. Do. You. Mean?"
2.) Insisting that “they have it at the OTHER Panera.” Auh yes, the all consuming “other Panera.” For some reason this statement means we must do whatever they tell us to do.
“Excuse me, could I please have a #5, and also your soul?”
“You can have the #5 certainly, but as for my soul.. we really don’t offer that ma’am.”
“They do at the OTHER Panera.”
The "other" Panera is always cleaner, more efficient, and better overall. The "other" Panera always waits on your hand and foot. They are there when your baby is born, when your son graduates from college, and when a loved one passes. If the "other" Panera actually spat in their food, swore at them, and then drop-kicked them in the face, and even if there were no ‘other’ Paneras (which there unfortunately are) customers would still use this line.
3.) Reminding the employees that they are above you. This comes across as them not knowing that we as humans evolved from the Ape a very long time ago. And from this age we were granted with many opportunities: throwing our trash away, peeing IN a toilet, and putting more food into our mouth than we do on the floor. If there is one thing I have learned from working at Panera, it is that no matter how near or conveniently placed a trashcan may seem, it is always too far or poorly placed for someone. I have picked up paper towels right next to the trashcan. Right behind the trashcan. On top of the trashcan. Why is it that only a lucky two out of ten have the brainpower to produce the revelation that it goes IN the trashcan?
4.) The fourth and final form that I will actually discuss is: asking an employee a question, only to announce they already know the answer.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, what bagels don't have dairy in them?”
“I'm not sure. Would you like to look over our nutritional guide book?”
“Sure. Hmm this one has dairy. This one does too. What about plain? Do you think plain bagels have dairy in them?”
“I am going to go ahead and guess that they all do based on what we've read so far..”
“NO, NO. They don't. See? See??!” As they point rapidly at the page.
“Would you like to buy one then...?”
“Well. I GUESS.” And then they will sigh like it is the most inconvenient thing in the world that Panera was not formed for them. Not only this, but that the employee working with them has direct control over all the products sold. Because they obviously were the ones to found, launch, and oversee the company. This is why they are now put on display in a stupid hat and apron, forced to wait on the hand and foot of strangers. Clearly the owner of a large chain-business usually does this.
As I mentioned before there were really no benefits to working at Panera while I was there. But in retrospect, this experience was one that built character. I realize there are certain parts of climbing the ladder to achievement that most of us cannot skip. The nice part about a summer job, is that sooner or later you return to school and the nightmare is over. Then you know never to work in food services ever again. But in addition to this, you may also learn to be patient with people who might be a little less fortunate than you are. You learn learn how to handle the angriest, rudest, meanest people you will ever meet in your life. On my lunch break (when they were so gracious as to actually let me sit down after working for eight hours). I’d sit there in my degrading and heinous outfit. I would watch who I later labeled as “real women.” They wore heels and nice skirts or pant suits. I could tell they had careers. I could tell they didn’t answer to 16 year olds, and that they were good at what they did. This is a sub-ingredient, job-requirement even. If you are making lots of money for someone else at crappy minimum wage, you have to despise your job. You have to hate it so passionately that everyone you see is somehow better off than you are. This is so you can dream big, and realize you are meant for something a little better (or at least hope).
Through my experience at Panera, I many times found myself despondent over just being there. My job felt so worthless. It made me miserable. I worked with miserable people, and I wasn’t doing it for the betterment of society, or to develop any job skills, or whatever else I may conjure up as a just reason to torture myself. I was making money yes, but I suppose there’s another small project alongside working at Panera. In addition to all the strange and bizarre, but real people that create this business, there is my own little bread project, if you will. We have all had crappy jobs. Even the people who would get to keep all the cash that would run through my hands and into a drawer each day, once had a crappy job. Looking back on this I can see these rich people benefiting from my labor that I envisioned in my head weren't the only ones receiving success through my work experiences. No experience working with people and business is wasted. Regardless of where we end up in the end, we all have to wait through the meaningless mush and slop of dough that sometimes is our life. The hardest part is waiting for the dough to rise through the tough stages until we reach that point where we’re all good and ready to be finished, displayed, and taste tested by the world. But if we get through that we'll be okay- until we must build another project anyway. Not everything in life feels like it has a purpose while we're doing it.
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