Donut Addicts
Some kind co-workers brought donuts and assorted fattening pastries to work this morning. Most of the generic mom-and-pop bakeries (a lot of them are owned by Cambodian-Americans, it turns out) out here pack their tasty treats in bright pink boxes, so right away when you come to work and see those telltale grease-spotted pink cubes, you know there will be joy and pain to come. I was good and only had a bite of a glazed and a bite of a chocolate-iced crueller. I love to eat donuts, but they make me feel sick, sluggish, uncomfortably full but nutritionally unfulfilled.
I've pretty much stopped eating donuts. I used to eat maybe two or three a day. This was about ten years ago, when I worked at a bakery near Columbus, Ohio. It was one of my first real jobs, and by "real" I mean "underpaying, soul-sucking, labor-intensive with few to no rewards outside of a skimpy paycheck."
My shift started at 6am, right when the bakery opened. I didn't have a key, so I'd pull into the wintery darkness of the parking lot and wait for my co-worker Kim to arrive and unlock the door to the dark bakery. I tried to arrive about ten minutes early so I could start brewing huge urns of coffee and "tray up the donuts", which would have been friend and glazed just a few hours prior by the trashy night baker. I think he smoked while he worked, and I had this mental image of his ashes floating down into the gently sizzling vat oil that bathed and browned the cooking donuts.
I liked the routine of the morning, but I didn't care for the rush and pressure to ready everything before opening the bakery. We had a parade of regulars who'd come in most mornings--an alder classy woman who always got to ieces of toast with jam, a cop who'd get a large decaf and then pour about ten little cups plastic of half-and-half into it. As he emptied the little cups, he'd line them up across the counter and then leave. I hated him for that, how he couldn't just throw them away himself.
Some regular customers I liked--most I liked--and some I had no opinion of. A few I hated, like that cop. They were snobby (this was just a regular little bakery in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, not Payard or nothin') and treated me like a high school dropout. Wrong--I was a college dropout, and a very unhappy one.
Two of our regular customers I couldn't make my mind up about. It was a man and a woman--husband and wife, I assumed--who met every morning and stood in the frigid darkness outside, waiting for us to open up the bakery. The woman--who, in cold weather, wore a scarf wrapped babushka-style over her hair --ordered two glazed donuts and a decaf coffee, while the man ordered an iced jelly donut and a regular coffee. I'd fill up their coffee cups from the huge Bunn coffee urns and place their donuts on industrial-grade white ceramic plates. Then the couple sat at one of the little tables, sipping their coffee and leaning in close as they spoke to each other. They usually stayed for about fifteen minutes.
I never knew thier names. They were nice people, nothing too noteable about them from what I could see. For a while, maybe about a week or two, the woman came in on her own. Where was the man? But he came back the next Monday, standing by the door, waiting in the dark for donuts.
Who were these people, who were so smitten with routine that they woke up early just so they could make it to the barkey before it opened...so they could *wait*? It was charming but frustrating. I wanted more for them and for their lives. I left the bakery after five long months of employment so I could work in Wyoming for the summer. But I'm sure the couple stayed, kept on coming back at 5:55 into the summer and the fall and then winter again. I'm not sure if donuts every morning make the best breakfast.
I've pretty much stopped eating donuts. I used to eat maybe two or three a day. This was about ten years ago, when I worked at a bakery near Columbus, Ohio. It was one of my first real jobs, and by "real" I mean "underpaying, soul-sucking, labor-intensive with few to no rewards outside of a skimpy paycheck."
My shift started at 6am, right when the bakery opened. I didn't have a key, so I'd pull into the wintery darkness of the parking lot and wait for my co-worker Kim to arrive and unlock the door to the dark bakery. I tried to arrive about ten minutes early so I could start brewing huge urns of coffee and "tray up the donuts", which would have been friend and glazed just a few hours prior by the trashy night baker. I think he smoked while he worked, and I had this mental image of his ashes floating down into the gently sizzling vat oil that bathed and browned the cooking donuts.
I liked the routine of the morning, but I didn't care for the rush and pressure to ready everything before opening the bakery. We had a parade of regulars who'd come in most mornings--an alder classy woman who always got to ieces of toast with jam, a cop who'd get a large decaf and then pour about ten little cups plastic of half-and-half into it. As he emptied the little cups, he'd line them up across the counter and then leave. I hated him for that, how he couldn't just throw them away himself.
Some regular customers I liked--most I liked--and some I had no opinion of. A few I hated, like that cop. They were snobby (this was just a regular little bakery in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, not Payard or nothin') and treated me like a high school dropout. Wrong--I was a college dropout, and a very unhappy one.
Two of our regular customers I couldn't make my mind up about. It was a man and a woman--husband and wife, I assumed--who met every morning and stood in the frigid darkness outside, waiting for us to open up the bakery. The woman--who, in cold weather, wore a scarf wrapped babushka-style over her hair --ordered two glazed donuts and a decaf coffee, while the man ordered an iced jelly donut and a regular coffee. I'd fill up their coffee cups from the huge Bunn coffee urns and place their donuts on industrial-grade white ceramic plates. Then the couple sat at one of the little tables, sipping their coffee and leaning in close as they spoke to each other. They usually stayed for about fifteen minutes.
I never knew thier names. They were nice people, nothing too noteable about them from what I could see. For a while, maybe about a week or two, the woman came in on her own. Where was the man? But he came back the next Monday, standing by the door, waiting in the dark for donuts.
Who were these people, who were so smitten with routine that they woke up early just so they could make it to the barkey before it opened...so they could *wait*? It was charming but frustrating. I wanted more for them and for their lives. I left the bakery after five long months of employment so I could work in Wyoming for the summer. But I'm sure the couple stayed, kept on coming back at 5:55 into the summer and the fall and then winter again. I'm not sure if donuts every morning make the best breakfast.
posted by Lefty at 4:15 PM
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