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“Tristan, the butter isn’t even mixed in. It’s literally in chunks,” she said, looking into the bowl. “And this dough is way too sticky. It has nowhere near enough flour,” she said, trying to shake the dough from her hand.
“Oh well, not a problem. I can add more,” I said.
“Well how much did you already put in?” she asked, scooping more of the dough out and looking more closely at it.
“Oh, I don’t know, about half a bag.” I shrugged.
“The recipe for this size calls for…” She mentally calculated it. “Oh man…I don’t even know off the top of my head. I’d have to calculate it…but it’s supposed to make 1440 cookies…or 120 dozen,” she said with frustration.
“Okay, so I’ll add more.” I shrugged, heading for the flour.
“No…please…I’ll take charge of these. This dough is garbage. Why don’t you package up these orders to go to Baking Crate. Leave the boxes unsealed so I can make sure they are done correctly.”
I watched her as she wheeled the large mixing bowl across the kitchen and dumped all the dough into the garbage, and then she washed the bowl and began again. While I packaged up each of the orders, I watched her as she measured out each of the ingredients, mixing them in at the appropriate times.
As the morning went on, other staff began arriving, and then soon we were open. Melinda continued baking at a furious pace, while I continued boxing up the Baking Crate orders. When I was finished, I took out trays of cookies and popped them into the display cases and made my way back into the kitchen where Melinda was checking over my packing skills.
“Well?” I questioned.
“These look pretty good,” she said, going over the boxes I’d done. “Now they have to go into these Baking Crate boxes, and once in there, you’re going to pack this shredded paper around the box, making sure that it’s snug inside and cannot move,” she said, shoving handfuls of paper around the Crispy Biscuit branded boxes.
Who didn’t know how to stuff a box, I thought to myself. So, once she went back to what she had been working on, I began stuffing the boxes with paper and taping them shut with the special labels that I’d been told to use.
We’d continued working until three in the afternoon when, completely exhausted, I slid into a chair with a cup of coffee. All of the other kitchen staff that ran the diner were gone, their areas already cleaned.
“What on earth are you doing?” Melinda questioned, coming back in from serving a customer.
“I’m taking a break. Having a coffee. Everyone else got one.”
“There’s no time. Fred, the delivery guy for the Baking Crate orders, will be here any minute. I had to ask him to push our pickup back. We can’t be sitting around. We need to get them over to the back door, then we need to clean this place up.”
I looked around at the mess of the kitchen—bowls, cookie sheets everywhere. Just then there was a knock on the back door.
“Oh God, he’s here,” she said, panicking, grabbing one of the carts and pulling it over to the back door.
She pushed the door open, allowing him to step inside. “Sorry, a little behind today,” she cried.
“No worries, Melinda. We heard what happened to Brooke. I’m sure you’re doing your best, so if you need some pickup adjustments, just let me know,” he said, smiling at her.
“Tristan. Bring those over here!” she yelled.
I got up, first taking another sip of coffee, and began pushing the carts over to the door. Fred began grabbing boxes, carefully loading them into his truck, and as soon as all the carts were empty, he closed the doors to his truck and wished us a good day. As we shut the back door, we both turned to look at the mess we still had to clean up.
Immediately, Melinda began washing, while I took the sheets of parchment off each of the cookie trays and began putting them back where I’d gotten them from.
“What are you doing? You know those trays need to be washed right.”
“Oh yes, of course. I’ll load them in once I’m finished,” I lied.
Melinda worked circles around me, washing and cleaning up everything, and soon she stood at the back door, her coat and purse in hand. “Finish loading those trays and make sure you unload them tonight,” she instructed.
“Sure thing.”
“Be ready tomorrow because we do it all again,” she sang.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the Baking Crate orders were already up to fifty last I checked, and we have some large tray orders to get ready for the inn.”
