Tag: Wisconsin

Minimum Wage Bakery

A lesson in time management.

So this was when I was about 22. I had two full-time jobs. I was a window washer in Fond Du Lac Wisconsin and I was working at a sandwich shop in Oshkosh Wisconsin. While working both of those full-time jobs I decided to get another job at a bakery… I guess it was just a real good time to get jobs. I liked baking and had some experience baking scones. 

I quickly realized there was a lot less baking involved than I had imagined. Basically my job was to put little dough slugs onto a pans and move the pans. Those slugs were going to be baked into hot dog buns. I spent my day standing up, leaning forward, lifting metal trays of dough slugs, and twisting with them. 

My dad is a physical therapist. He told me that the BEST way to get a back injury is to be standing, leaning forward, lifting something, and twisting with it. Which is exactly what I did for my whole shift.  My dad explained that that’s what UPS drivers do for most of their day and they are a large number of his physical therapy clients [at that time].

So I knew that I was doing exactly what I needed to do, to ruin my back. But that’s not a big deal, you know? I figured I’d move my way up in the bakery world? I mean working at a sandwich shop you’re not really going to go anywhere with that perhaps. And window washers, well they’ll all fall to their death eventually. (It wasn’t a high rise job but that’s where you’d move up to, I assume, in that career. So I figured a bakery was a good way to go. I was no stranger to hard work or back pain 🙂 And I think baking’s cool because it’s like the metallurgy of the cooking world.

I saw at least one cockroach in the sink supply room. This is Wisconsin btw. Cockroaches aren’t super common, because it’s cold sometimes yo. So you have to be pretty dirty to have cockroaches in Wisconsin. Which that bakery was. 

I worked there for a week and I got my first paycheck. Then I realized I had never asked what I was getting paid. I figured since it was such a labor intensive job (throughout the whole shift) that the pay must be pretty good, but it was pretty not. The pay was crap. I was getting minimum wage ($5.15ish at the time) which is a lot less than either of my other jobs. Definitely less than both combined. So as soon as I looked at that paycheck I politely quit, right then and there. That was the only time I never gave 2 weeks notice. Because holy crap how can you pay someone that little for that much work?

Okay, so about the other two full-time jobs. I pretty much got fired from the window washing job. I mean I came in to quit. And that’s when they were going to fire me. So it was kind of a tie. But I mean, obviously I had gotten really far behind on my window washing route. It was in a city 20-25 minutes away, I already had a full-time job at a sandwich shop, and a part-time job at a disgusting Bakery for crappy pay. But the sandwich shop that I worked at was going to throw away these two gallon jugs of Dawn dish soap because something happened, and they bought them in industrial size bottles before they got something installed in the wall that dispenses soap. And now they gotta get rid of the dish soap. Well, I happened to know that window washing place I worked for used Dawn dish soap for all the window washer stuff. 

OK, back to the tie. So I’m coming in and they’re all there. And they say 

Hey, we got to let you know that you’re really far behind on your stuff, and your route…

And they’re all looking at me. So I say, 

Hey, I… have a different full-time job and a part time job at a bakery right now. Turns out that’s too much stuff to do. I’m so sorry, do you guys need 2 weeks notice? 

And the boss said no, we were actually going to fire you right now… 

So I said great, okay, no hard feelings here’s 2 gallons of dish soap that you guys use; that’s kind of cool right? 

They were like oh thanks. 

So that went pretty well. 

I don’t know if it was before after that, but I became a manager at the sub sandwich place. So, Movin On Up in the world. 

Huzzah!

Weiners Ole’!

I want to share a recipe that my mom got from her mom. It’s jam packed with sodium, almost all the ingredients come from cans, and it is topped with hot dogs. It’s called Weiners Ole’.

You will need several of “cream of” cans; such as cream of potato or cream of mushroom soup. The can should have at least 800 milligrams of salt per serving. Mix that with a couple of cans of sliced potatoes (not fresh potatoes), and canned green beans.

Then add the piece of resistance; take a handful of hot dogs, slice then the long way, and delicately place them on top in a fancy pattern or shape. (If you have small hands, get two handfuls.)

Bake that mess, probably, at 350. Basically, by the time the hot dogs are starting to curl up it’s good. All that stuff in there has been cooked already so the cook time is up to you.

This delightful fall and springtime delicacy can be cooked in a glass hot dish or a cast iron dish. My momma puts it into a stoneware dish because we classy like that.

As mentioned, once those hot dogs are curled you got yourself a big fat helping of carbs, fat, crude protein and sodium that the kids will love. But only when they are kids. They’ll crave the texture of baked hot dogs until they realize it is stunting their growth, receding their hairlines, and supporting terrorists.

I probably cannot eat this anymore, but maybe you can?

Epilogue

The concept of “hot dish” is apparently foreign outside of the Midwest. I did not know that other places don’t have “hot dish”; or maybe they call it something else. But in Wisconsin we put whatever we got in a casserole pan and it becomes hot dish. In my family’s case it’s Wieners Ole’!