He stood at the back doorway of the kitchen, leaned against
the frame, and stared up at the morning sun. Flour dusted his nose and hair, his arms, his jeans, and his
heavy black shoes were mostly grey.
A year ago he would have lit up a cigarette. But now he threw the wrapper to his wad of gum in the
garbage can and tried, once again, to calculate how many more dinner rolls he’d
have to bake before he took off at ten for his meeting. They were delivering to a big banquet
at five and 200 hungry ad executives were expected for their regional planning
dinner. You would think it was
simple enough to just do the math and realize that after making 125 rolls since
5am, he had 75 left to go. But
there were other calculations people never seemed to realize bakers had to
make. The rising ratio, the droppage factor, the order buffer, and he always
threw in a dozen extra for the wait staff who would, no doubt, be starving
after setting up and serving that demanding crowd for three hours. If his mental math was correct, he had
three more batches, or 100 more to go…
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