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.