Making Bread

A dozen or so years ago I was temping and was offered some shifts at a bakery that had just opened in the town. It was owned by Budgens and they'd relocated from Slough to be near their distribution centre in Wellingborough. Apparently the Factory Manager had chosen Kettering over Wellingborough because staff costs were cheaper. That didn't bode well for me, but I turned up on the first shift at the unearthly hour of two in the morning. I was given an overall and hairnet, shown the toilet and canteen and then we made our way onto the factory floor.

I've worked in a lot of food factories over the years and it is my assertion that our hospitals would not have anything like the infection rates they currently or historically have had if they had to observe the hygeine rules that apply to food production. I regularly see hospital staff walking around town in their work uniforms, even in theatre green gowns.
Anyone leaving the bakery premises for any reason had to remove their overalls. Food contamination is a big deal. So why are hospitals so lax?

I was introduced to my supervisor and was given a job to do. I think it was passing baking trays through a scrubber/greaser. Any bake waste was cleaned off and a film of oil applied. The bakery got through thousands of trays in a shift and some may have been used more than once.

The bakery produced loaves and rolls, plus doughnuts, apple turnovers and hot cross buns. They also produced "part bake" french sticks that, as the name implies, were part baked and then frozen. They were then delivered to the store and finished off in the instore bakery. Sometimes the smell of fresh baked bread isn't always what it seems.

The bakery had two types of oven. One was a conveyor belt when the "raw" loaves were loaded in one end and the baked loaves taken off at the other. The work work was very hot and potentially dangerous. I still have a scar or two on my arms from where a hot tray touched aginst my bare arm.
The other ovens were turntable type. The product was wheeled into the ovens on rolling racks and then rotated until they were baked. Each oven held three racks. I made sure I never worked these ovens. It was far too hot, the racks were too heavy, and it was too dangerous for me.

The reason for my early start became apparent. Each product was produced on a production line. The raw ingredients were loaded into a huge bowl which was then mixed and loaded into a hopper. The machine then extruded the dough according to the specifications and the dough passed through the machine, being neaded and rested until it emerged at the other end where the individual rolls dropped onto the greased trays. These were then loaded onto a rack and then into a proving cabinet. After a while they were ready to bake and they went through the ovens and on to the packing area. It took about 5-6 hours from raw ingredients to packed product.
The main bottleneck was the ovens, hence the staggered starting times. The roll plant started at two in the morning and the bread plant at six.
Over the next few months I worked in every department of the bakery, always as a temp, despite their overtures to join on a permanent basis.
In the run-up to Easter we made so many hot cross buns I was sick of the sight of them. I was working on the packing line loading the trays ready for despatch and we'd be packing them for hours.
Another time I worked on the Part-Bake line. I also worked on the conveyor oven, the bread plant, the doughnut plant, packing the frozen french sticks into boxes. I even worked in the despatch area, picking the individual stores requirements.
My favourite (?) job was when I was asked to produce a product called "Bun Rounds"

They were similar to the illustration except they were covered in icing and topped with a glace cherry. I had to do every part of the process. I loaded the dough into the moulds, into the prover, into the oven, then applied the icing and the cherry before packing them, labelling them and taking them to the despatch.
It was hard work but I enjoyed the challenge of having a deadline to work to.

I can't remember how or why I came to leave. I'd been working on and off for almost a year. I must have had a better offer, or went on holiday and came back to find someone else in my place.
That's what happens when you temp.

Call Centres- outbound

Call Centres. Don't you just love them. Don't you just love it when you get a phone call just as you're sitting down to dinner. You pick the phone up and for a few seconds there's silence. Eventually a voice comes on the line and asks to speak to the owner of the house (and usually in a foreign accent).

Welcome to the world of Call Centres. I've worked in several over the years and basically there are two sorts- inbound and outbound.
Of the two, inbound is probably better. The customer rings you. With outbound you ring the customer.
I've done a couple of temp jobs in outbound call centres.
The first was a part time job while I was recovering from a shoulder injury. In hindsight I shouldn't have taken it because I got into trouble with the DSS and lost my benefit for a few weeks. Although the rules stated that you could work up to 16 hours a week without losing your benefits you have to get their permission first. The problem is that they are slow in reaching a decision, and the job has gone before they come back to you. So I went ahead and took the job.

It was awful. Soul destroying. Four hours of torture for minimum wage.

The job training was of the "you'll soon get the hang of it" variety. My tools were a telephone and a well thumbed local business directory. My task was to cold call local firms on behalf of an agency that tried to find placements for young people. My firm got paid for every appointment I was able to make for the agency rep.

Well for a start half the numbers didn't work. Most of the rest when they could be bothered to answer the phone weren't interested and it took less than a week to work through the directory. I was promised another database of businesses to work through but that never happened. In the end I gave up, thoroughly discouraged.
What a crap job.

I have every sympathy with call centre operators who ring to try and sell me cavity wall insulation or whatever it is they're trying to sell. It's a thankless job with no end product and no job satisfaction.

I did another spell working in an outbound call centre. This was slightly different. I was working for a domestic shower company making appointments for engineers to call to fix leaking showers. So in essence it wasn't really cold calling as the client had already rung in to report the fault.
My job was to make an appointment for the engineer to call.
Each engineer was allocated a territory and we had to manage his appointments so that he made best use of his time. Sometimes the engineer would have to travel a couple of hundred miles to get to all his calls so it wasn't possible to set an exact time when he would arrive. The best we could promise was either morning or afternoon. Sometimes I'd have to phone a client a dozen times before they answered the phone, and then there'd be negotiations because the day or time wasn't suitable.
Once again I have every sympathy with the operator when I have to ring to make an appointment for an engineer to call. They can't just drop everything and come at your beck and call.

I went for a couple of interviews for outbound call centre jobs, not that I was interested in getting the job mind you. Sometimes you go to an interview just to keep your agency happy.

I recall being sent to an interview about twenty five miles away, way outside the distance I was willing to travel for a job at minimum wage. I was told that it was an inbound call centre but when I arrived it was outbound.

It was a short interview.

Another time I was sent to a new call centre that was being set up. They were trying to get local builders to sign up to a builders only credit card. It was a sound business idea with soild financial backing.
When I arrived I found the same management team that I had for the first job I described above. Not a good start.
There were a dozen or so candidates and we were given some team building tests followed by a face to face interview. During the preliminaries we were told about "open" and "closed" questions, and to use open questions where possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-ended_question

I had my interview with the personnel woman and she asked me if I knew the difference between an "open" and "closed" question? It was with great delight that I answered "yes" and said no more.

Apparently I did enough to be offered a job, but the hours (Mon-Fri 2-10pm)were against me. I was playing a lot of music and attending meetings most evenings so it was no go. Still, I'd have enjoyed the challenge.
I've no idea if the credit card got off the ground. It depended on getting the local builders merchants to accept them, and getting enough local builders to sign up. In the end I expect the recesssion killed it off because I've never seen it advertised anywhere.

Multi Drop

About ten years ago I was working in a distribution warehouse and discussing the rise of the internet. I made the sweeping statement that town centres were doomed because of the rise of out of town shopping centres and the internet. I went as far as to say that one day we would either be warehousemen or white van men. Either picking and packing, or delivering goods ordered over the net.
Nothing I've seen has changed my view. You can go shopping at Iceland and they will deliver your shopping for you. You don't even have to go to Tesco or Sainsbury's, just click on the website.
After I left the retail sector following redundancy about fifteen years ago I've done all manner of jobs including warehouse/distribution and multi-drop deliveries. Yes I've been a white van man. And a white 7 1/2 ton lorry man.
I drove a C15 fridge van around East Anglia for a meat products firm. My round extended from Peterborough in the north to Clacton in the south, from Ipswich in the east to Hitchin in the west. In the eighteen months or so that I worked there I averaged 2000 miles a week and went around the clock at least once. I wore out several sets of tyres and broke down and had to be towed home a few times as well.
I must have driven along every road between the A14 and the A12 looking for a way past traffic jams and making up time. Every customer wanted his goods first thing and you can't be in Peterborough, Cambridge and Colchester at the same time.

Another time I drove a 7 1/2 ton lorry delivering goods to schools in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. There were always too many deliveries and I'd always run out of time and have to bring some back. I was working for an agency so I'd only get an odd day here or there and I never ever went to the same school twice. I recall driving through rural Oxfordshire full pelt, trying to make up time, with my map on my knee and trying to get to the other side of the valley. I turned down a country lane that appeared to connect the two roads only to find it narrowing at the bottom and with no way to turn around. I decided to continue and forced my way through the trees overhanging the road. The sides of the lorry were quite scratched and there was branches and foliage all over the road.
Another time I managed to spill a tin of emulsion paint all over the floor of the van. What a mess. I talked my way out of that when I got back to the depot.
I wasn't so lucky a few weeks later when, as I drove past some roadworks, a digger suddenly turned and caught my wing mirror with its shovel, shattering the glass.
I took the van back and explained that it was a genuine accident.
I don't think they believed me because I wasn't asked back.

Another time I worked in a distribution centre unloading the night time trunkers. You've seen the vans driving around the place delivering catalogue goods. Back then they were festooned with three flying ducks along the side.
We worked from about 9.00 until 6 or 7 in the morning. A trunker would pull up and back up to the loading bay. The tractor would detatch the trailer, hook up to an empty trailer and go back to the hub. He'd return later with another full trailer, unhook and take the by now empty trailer away. And return a couple of hours later with a third.
The back of the lorry would be opened and the goods would cascade out all over the floor. The constant motion of the journey put paid to any stacking of the goods. It looked as though the trailer had been loaded by a hopper chute through the roof.
Our job was to take each item, look at the delivery label and place the item by the back doors of the delivery vans, anything up to 40 of them. There were all kinds of items from clothing to hoovers and garden tools, in fact anything you could order from a catalogue. Our small team worked away and eventually emptied the trailer. Then we had a short break and started on the next one which had just arrived. It was all go and we earned our money.
It was still preferable to driving the delivery vans. Each driver was expected to deliver 60 or more items to household addresses often miles from the depot. If there was no-one home he had to go back later and try and deliver it and get a signature.
I worked as a driver's mate delivering large bulky items that couldn't be handled by one person. That wasn't too bad as the drops were well spaced out and there weren't as many, but I always declined any offers to work on the delivery vans.
That was a hiding to nothing.