Solidarity

Its funny how the bakery can be like a little disfunctional family. Like most jobs, there are people there whom I like, people whom I take little notice of and sometimes we all drive one another buggy. Usually its over small things, but we do get on each others' nerves. Sometimes this evolves into outright hostility, but usually it is confined to rolled eyes and under the breath bitching about other people.

But no matter what your feelings towards a fellow bakeryperson, there is an unspoken code of conduct involving customers. If someone is nasty to you without good reason, your co-workers will not only step up to the counter and take one for the team, sparing you the pain of waiting on them, they will subtly make the interloper pay for mistreating you.

Case in point:

We have a small group of teenage friends who come in from the high school for lunch almost every day. We refer to them as 'the nice teenagers'. They are all pleasant, not too loud, say hi to us and clean up after themselves before they leave and vacate the childrens' corner if little kids come in.

But sometimes other kids come in at lunch and are in a hurry and push and shove and are generally annoying. A bunch of them were in one day and as I was waiting for a girl to choose the PERFECT cinnamon roll from the tray, this kid shoves in beside her and starts loudly demanding a cup of water from me.

I ignored him and then looked at him and said slowly,

"I'm waiting on her right now. If you hang on, I'll be right with you." in my best blank voice.

The kid gave me a LOOK and then said in a whiney voice,

"I KNOW her. She's a friend of mine."

I look at him again and say,

"And as soon as I'm done waiting on your FRIEND, I'll be free to take care of you."

He looks slightly stunned, then asks again for a cup of water. Normally we dont give them out, but for some reason I decide to just give him one to get rid of him.

Critical bakerygirl error there.

I hand him a paper cup of tap water and he looks at it, then at me and says witheringly,

"Dont you have any ICE?"

At this point a wall of massive I-Have-Had-It-With-You slams down over my brain, and I look him in the eye and say slowly and carefully as if to a person reading lips,

"No, in fact, we do NOT have any ice. Because this is a bakery and we BAKE things. We dont freeze them. In fact, I dont think we have a freezer in the entire place. There is a cooler over there with cold bottles of water that you can BUY, if that's what you want."

His face goes white- not sure if its from shock at being reprimanded by a mere bakerygirl or from rage/embarassment at it happening in front of his friends- and he slouchs back from the counter.

A few minutes later the gang is about to depart and he comes up to the counter again and says to me huffily,

"You know, your customer service SUCKS! You have a really bad attitude problem." in a so-there! kind of way.

I am livid. I must stop myself from leaping over the counter and throttling this dumb kid. Instead I give him my very best narrow-eyed look and say,

"Oh really? YOU are telling ME that I have a bad attitude while you drink your free cup of water and eat your free slice of bread? Give me a break, kid."

He suddenly looks as if he might cry, he is so angry. If I weren't so angry myself, I might be upset at the ludicrisnous of the situation and how he has pushed my buttons. But then he runs to the door and yells back at me,

"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!" as he runs out onto the sidewalk.

I am furious. My hands are shaking, my co-workers concern falls on deaf ears. It takes me more than a day to get over being upset about this snotty kid- and worse, I am really upset at my own reaction, at my own buying into the imaginary importance of this little scenario in either of our lives as a whole. I mean, what the hell??!! I was ready to strangle some spoiled kid for being nasty to me- why did it even bother me?

But it did, dear readers, it did.

However life moves on and new people come in and we all get over things eventually. Then last week I was behind the shelf by the coffee racks when I saw this dark haired kid come in and - it was him! No way in hell I was waiting on him, so I stayed behind the shelf while he stood there aimlessly at the counter.

Then he looked over and met my eyes and I gave him a really dirty look. His eyes narrowed as I walked out from behind the shelf and towards the back, totally ignoring him. Katie glanced at me, then at him and walked up to the counter, planting herself sqaurely in front of the kid.

He sideled around, trying to look past her at me and she took a step to the side, blocking his view. He craned his neck the other way and did it again and once more she gave him a direct glare and blocked his line of sight again. Stone-faced she cut him a piece of bread and then he high tailed it out of the bakery and Katie came back to the table with me and we shared a moment of sisterhood. We may all get on each other's nerves, but even in dysfunctional families, if you pick a fight with one kid, you usually end up fighting them all. Thank you, Katie ;)

xxxooo, bakerygirl