The Curious

I had not worked in a real bakery since first beginning my pastry career 14 years ago.  My pastry training began in a French bakery two blocks from my home in Minnesota.  They were looking for a pastry chef and being a frequent customer, the counter manager put in a good word for me with the owner, though I didn't even know how to turn on a Hobart mixer.  My college degree was in computer science and I had worked in this field, doing business systems analysis and programming, for seven years.  I had hated every day of it, but that is another story.  After two years at this bakery and being trained in the basics by French pastry chefs, I began my odyssey of working in restaurants.  Now, after 12 years, I returned to the smell of hundreds of loaves of bread baking in large ovens and ovens filled by the labor of immigrant workers.

At first, the Mexicans never came up to my work space when I was there.  I would see one or two standing in my area when I was returning from the bathroom or lunch, staring at whatever work I had in process.  They would leave before I got back, walking quickly back to their table or machine.  I could sometimes tell when they were talking about me or the work I was doing.  I would look up and one or two of them would smile, but the rest looked at me without emotion on their face, as if I were someone they did not recognize and had no desire to.

Work Space

The bakery production manager, Alfredo told me to choose an area on any of the large wooden work tables for my own space each day; all I had to do if someone else got in my way was to tell them to move.  This seemed easy enough, but even as he told me, I knew I didn't have it in me to tell someone who had worked there longer than me, knew what they were doing better than me and had every reason to dislike me to move.

Alfredo had worked his way up from a baker to the production manager.  His father, Epifanio cleaned the bakery at night.  Two of his brothers, Osiel and Misiel worked as bakers.  He and Osiel were the only bakers that spoke any English.  Alfredo had a monochrome somewhat rustic Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed on his chest. He told me he had it done when he was young, by someone in Mexico, a friend who didn't have any training.  I almost always, when glancing at him, assumed it was hair on his chest, then remembered his chest was hairless and smooth and that it was the simply rendered religious icon looking out from his open shirt.

Each day I carried my heavy red tool box into the bakery, looked for the least conspicuous place to stake out an area and began to work, in silence.  Often, I felt the eyes of the curious turned on me.

The First Days in the Shop

All of the production workers in the bakery are male Mexican immigrants.  I felt intimidated walking into the shop to work for the first time, carrying my red tool box, having heads turn and eyes follow me as I walked across the painted cement floor with a little insecurity in my step.  I do not really speak Spanish.  I am female and of European descent.  I have a college education.  I am over the age of 35.  I told myself from the beginning that I would never fit in and be one of the "guys".  How could I be?  I couldn't even understand what they were talking about; only two of the 15 employees could speak English.  I would come in, work and leave.  I would not feel bad about being alone.  I was not there to make friends, I was there to build a pastry department.