Job #2 Bakery Clerk circa '94-'96

This was my longest term of employment. I spent 3 solid years employed at the Hy-Vee bakery in Macomb, Illinois as a Wrapper during high school. Good times. My sister got me the job, as she worked there too. I, in turn, got my buddy Wilson a job there. The job entailed wrapping/bagging all the baked goods that the bakers Pat and Juan had baked during the day and then cleaning the place up. I'd come in after school and work a 4-8 shift and work one 7-3 shift on the weekend. Usually Sundays. The evenings were all right. Work by myself and just get shit done but Sundays now that was a fun time. I'd work with Juan Guzman and sometimes both Wilson and I would be working. We got to help bake and then as the bread cooled we would wrap. Spent a good part of the day bullshitting with Juan at the big, wooden baking table rolling out, kneading, and forming bread, bagels, and donuts. And we'd have the occasional dough ball fight.



One Sunday morning the doughnut fryer was still there and the four of us were sporadically placed throughout the bakery in defensive positions winging little dough balls at each other. Generally our doughy missiles were quite well aimed, as we were well practiced, but occasionally there was an errant throw. That morning one dough ball flew through the bakery, into the deli, and straight into the hot case where it rested next to the mashed potatoes. While another flew out into aisle 1, narrowly missed an old lady, and tagged a bag of Wonder Bread. It's a good thing Juan was the Bakery Manager at the time or we might have gotten into trouble.



There was all kinds of bullshit with the job though. When I first started working there we wore polo shirts as uniforms but it wasn't long before they started making us wear black dress pants, a white dress shirt and a tie. At a fucking bakery? Still can't believe it. The ties were a complete pain in the ass. And black pants were immediately white with flower, dress shirts covered in dough. It was ridiculous. We always joked that somebody's tie was gonna get caught in the giant mixer and they'd be sucked into the bowl and become the finishing touch on the french bread.



The assistant store manager was an utter moron by the name Jim Heschke, I believe. Got his job by marrying the district manager's daughter. We were on strict orders by Juan to just smile and nod at anything Jim said or asked us to do but never to actually do it. This was because he had me put bread crumbs in the oven over night with the intent to dry them out for stuffing. It was a ton of bread that we had shreaded to make crumbs for dressing and Jim told me to put it all in the oven overnight, so that the heat from the pilot lights could dry it and we'd have stuffing in the morning. So I did it, knowing what would happen, because the assistant store manager told me to, right? Next morning Juan came in to find all the stuffing we had made the day before charred to blackened bits in the oven. That was one pissed off Mexican.



They made him Bakery Manager and then worked him to death, treated him like shit, and pushed him around. For the longest time they wouldn't hire him a second baker so he had to bake 7 days a week plus do all the management duties. Then they finally hired him a baker but pulled that guy off into another department the week before Thanksgiving. That was the final straw for Juan, he walked out, called us and let me and Wilson know. So we went in together, grabbed a free doughnut and found the store manager in the back room. As we ate our free doughnuts we told the guy we quit, weren't coming in for our next shift and that he needed to learn how to treat his employees with respect. The fryer quit too. I've never felt so good to be quitting a job. That time I felt perfectly justified to fuck them during the busiest week of the year.