Cooking doughnuts at WalMart

From September 1996-August 1997 I cooked doughnuts at a WalMart Supercenter. For 3 ½ of those months I also taught freshman history at a nearby university and for a month also was a radio news reporter.

One night when I got to the bakery, the other man of our three-person crew said he had been threatened by a manager the night before, one of my nights off.

The incident started when one of the stocker crew came into the bakery and asked Chalmer if there were any broken doughnuts. He was going on break and wanted a snack. Sure, Chalmer said, and he pointed to a small pile of broken doughnuts. The stacker put a few pieces in a small sack and went on break.

A few minutes later, a manager person Chalmer had never seen shoved open the bakery doors and said in a loud voice, “Did you give broken doughnuts to a stocker?” Chalmer said he did. The manager person then proceeded to talk not nicely to Chalmer, saying all doughnuts had to be accounted for and Chalmer was costing the company money, and so forth. He then demanded: “Do you eat doughnuts while you’re making them?”

Chalmer said, “Sure do.”

“Well, you will stop,” the manager person said. He pointed to dark plastic fixtures in the ceiling. “We’ve got security cameras, and we’re going to be watching. If you eat another doughnut, you will be fired!” And he stormed out.

When Chalmer finished the story, I said, “So they’re watching us, are they?”

“That’s what he said.”

I got a doughnut from a display case and faced the dark plastic orb. Then, raising the middle finger of my right hand, I ate the doughnut. Strangely, not a single manager person ever said anything. There was no camera.