The long summers at home during your college years are always strange. You struggle to reconnect with high school friends who have become pescatarians, flagrantly political, or theater majors. So instead, you spend evenings with your parents working on puzzles of Thomas Kinkade scenes and avoid the thought of your college friends interning in D.C. or solo hiking Patagonia.
When we weren’t puzzling together, my parents expected me to work. With the last tuition payment of my private liberal arts college still viscerally imprinted in their mind, here were some of the requirements for appropriate summer jobs laid out by my parents: It had to pay money, it had to seem strenuous enough–like not cause long-term, life-altering personal injury, but I should look physically exerted by the end of the day, and, finally, it had to be something I didn’t derive too much joy from, therefore putting any college plans on hold.
A friend of a friend’s cousin worked at such a place. It was called Creme Curl Factory, an oddly arranged clump of buildings for the making and distribution of a pastry called a creme curl. This is how I was hired–I called someone named Bill. I said, “Hi, Bill, my name is Karen. I know someone who works at Creme Curl. Can I work there?”
Bill: “Okay.”
I signed a paper, punched a time card, and started rolling pastry dough every week day from 7am to 4pm.
Creme Curl had grown from a family owned bakery in town operated by a handful of elderly women to a factory full of feuding social groups categorized by age, ethnicity, or windowless break room. Stepping inside was like walking through a time warp. The company’s policy on smoking while working was the only thing that had changed since 1975. The bond shared between all was less like coworkers and more like survivors of the same horrible car hi-jacking–these women hated Creme Curl. And yet it was what they had done for their entire lives, so being unable to resent it, they alternated between commiserating and blaming one another for all it ills. They did resent Bill though. Everyone in management, who were all men, had mustaches, and Bill’s was the biggest.
Hai was Bill’s #2 guy, though she was a woman who wore shorts for pants. She was the commanding officer of the line. I’m not sure if she was ever given a title or if one contemptuous stare had coerced Bill and his mustache to never question her. We all knew Hai was the real boss. If she saw you enjoying yourself too much, or too engrossed by a colleague’s racist laced story, she would raise her eyebrows, gesticulate wildly with a metal rolling pin, and point you to a new spot.
The factory ran on a ninety minute rotation. Each day started with every employee rolling on the line, the long conveyor belt carrying dough to be rolled onto metal rods called pins. Most days, I was assigned a spot rolling by Sandy Two–an avid fan of the local public TV station, WCET, where she watched every high school graduation so that she could give whoever she stood next to a play by play the next day.
Over the din of the machines, a bell would ring for break time and like roaches in the light, we would scurry to our prospective break rooms. As seasonal workers and those with zero social capital, we ate our bagged lunches outside by the dumpsters. When it rained, we sheepishly stood in the corner of the break room while watching the original curlers in their puffed hairnets eat from tables with personalized placemats. On the first rainy day of the summer, I heard about the “man wall”. These women spent break time ripping out pictures of hot guys from People magazine’s “Most Beautiful” edition each year until someone’s husband came to visit for lunch and complained to management, “I thought this was a Christian place!”
I’m sure he thought, How could the mustache men let this happen?
The man wall became a less titillating puppy wall. Frankly, Yorkies in a tea cup didn’t generate the same enthusiasm as a shirtless Antonio Banderas.
Wrinkles–she had wintered for decades in Florida and it showed– was the ring leader of this break room group. Wrinkles was not her given name. Some people called her that. Not me. But some people did.
If you were next to her on the line she would tell you about the good ol’ days when you could smoke and roll curls at the same time. Now she had to smoke in the bathroom which she hated. She would nonchalantly drop a line like, “Betty got her finger cut off in the filler and she was back rolling after lunch.” And grab another piece of dough.
The next ninety minute rotation was crucial. You would be moved to the pulling room to take the baked dough off the pins or the filling room to place the baked and de-pinned dough in a cream-filling machine. Every ten seconds, sixteen new creme curls were born as they were inserted in the machine and filled with creme. Standing spots in front of the machine were highly competitive. Rotation in the filling room happened every thirty minutes. Women would give up lunch breaks, sacrifice a first born child, just to avoid the most loathed spot in the line: The black spot picker. The black spot picker would spend an hour trying to scrape any black oil spots off the the curls when they glided on the conveyor belt from filling machine to packing station.
However, some people were desperate for this spot. Somehow, in creme curl arithmetics, if you started at the black spot picker it was wildly believed time moved faster. Little Megan, a fellow seasonal worker and dumpster eater, would jam her Lunchable in her mouth in between stories of probate court and drinking her juice through a Twizzler so she could get to the spot first. Little Megan wasn’t her given name, but some people called her that. Not me, just some people.
When Wrinkles was cruising on her golf cart in Florida, Sandy One took over. Sandy One had short hair that she spiked in all directions. Like a pufferfish sensing a predator, her yellow frosted tips poked through her hairnet glistening under the florescent lighting. Her main antagonist was Beth.
The two of them generally started the day at a seven on a scale of 1 being complete zen to 10 being a right wing pundit when Obama wore a tan suit, but the morning that it happened was exceptional. Bill had announced that everyone would be working until 5:30. This was the first and only time I saw Hai smile. I was sandwiched between Little Megan and the never ending saga of probate court to my left and Beth fuming about a litany of items– the Mustaches, overtime, Lebron James selling out to Miami– across the conveyor belt to Sandy One on my right. The sound of industrial machines flattening the dough hammered on.
While I was distracted by sweeping degradations of probate court judges, there had been an atmospheric shift. Beth and Sandy One moments ago unified in their rage against Bill, unfair treatment (being sent to the black picker spot), and Lebron in Miami, had turned on each other. Wild gestures and slamming for dramatic effect had made the excess flour cling to the air molecules, probably out of fear of Beth. Unable to differentiate the yelling and support of her demeaning of the judge over the sounds of the factory, Little Megan too began rage spinning the dough. Suddenly, I started seeing black spots, which didn’t feel right because I wasn’t in the black picker spot. The flour, humidity, and hostility was getting to me. My brain wanted escape and my body acquiesced.
I passed out.
I’m not sure how long it took for them to notice my lifeless body on the ground, but when I came to Hai was looming over me screaming, “Get up! Get up!” I had contaminated the line. Irritated that I hadn’t obeyed her command, she made several attempts to lift me by the armpits and drag me to the puppy wall break room. Some shred of self-preservation kicked in and I stood on my feet, the room still slightly spinning. After some concerns/accusations about my breakfast, “Well, did she eat anything this morning? I doubt it.” Sandy One and Beth were back at it. Beth’s ranting got more personal and needlessly profane. Sandy Two was getting uncomfortable and went to Bill with her complaints of impropriety. Hai left me with a cup of water in the break room and suspended Beth for using bad language.
In that moment, I knew I would never forget the events of that day. However, by 7:45 my episode was old news.
The rest of the summer passed uneventfully except for the day Little Megan received her inheritance after an extensive litigation.
The next summer, I called Creme Curl.
“Hi, Bill. This is Karen Holman. Can I work at Creme Curl this summer?”
Bill: “Who is this?”
Busy Nothings 