Second last day of work

Well, after 3 weeks of working, I'm resigning tomorrow. This will be the first time I will be receiving a pay check (in cash...lol) for working from a stranger.

In these three weeks, I have learnt so much, especially since I've been brought up in an environment that is way too comfortable. The people there are so practical and efficient. One time, our deep frying machine fell from the shelf and our master baker got deep fried, literally. The entire kitchen floor had a layer of hot oil on it, luckily, we're all supposed to wear sport shoes to work, so only the master got injured. We then treated the master and he was sent to the hospital. I could completely imagine what many students from our school would have done after that. Complain, complain, complain and start blaming someone for not putting the deep frying machine properly, and the whole day would have happened without further work done.

No, there, after the master was sent to the hospital, nobody spoke and they all started to grab a scraper and a metal bowl each and started clearing the floor of oil. In merely 20 minutes, the oil was basically all gone, and in 30 minutes, the floor looked cleaner than before the accident. And without rest, we continued doing our job and making stuff to sell. This practicality cannot be found in someone brought up in an environment where somebody else will clean up the mess that he makes, instead, in these 3 weeks, I have learnt to happily and automatically clear up the mess that anybody of the team makes. This allows the whole team to work much faster and so we can leave work earlier.


In these 3 weeks, learning to make food isn't the main thing, more importantly in the field of making food, I learnt to make food, really fast. The crew is so effective, in fact, one time, one person (who left already) made 180 breads in just under 2 hours. That speed is something I really admire and needs to be trained.Here is a picture of the crew.

From left to right, 

-Bor Hung, I'm sure you all know him :P They call me 小张

-小杨, we call him that not because he is an apprentice, because he had an older brother working there, and we call him 大杨. He's the one who made 180 breads in 2 hours. He's basically my master, he taught me how to make most of the stuff I make there.

-徐师傅, he's in charged of all the cakes, he's always trying to find opportunities to make bread (making bread is only by those of highest experience)

-The shop owner -- 老板 He usually works from 6:30 until only about 10, then he relaxes an does other stuff. He makes only quite few number of products, but he does them to great detail. He's always singing christian songs during work.

-申师傅, he's the master baker, the one who got deep fried. He is good at everything. In fact, none of us can match him at any of the products, but there's only one of him, so he does the hardest stuff. He's the bridge between us and the owner's wife, as she's the one who takes care of all the money.

-The two to the right, 小田 and 小陈 are new, they've been here for one week only. Both of them are really slow at doing anything, so they always get shouted at by everyone else. They make our life easy because every time we don't feel like making a product, we just ask them to make it. They must, since they don't really have a set of products they make everyday.

Here are some pictures of the workplace

 You can see the master chef taking a break, smoking outside.

The storage room, before we do anything to the stuff.

The front of the bakery, after we process the stuff from the picture above.

These three weeks, although lowly paid have been a great learning opportunity for me. Generally, I learnt how to be a person of use to the people around me without needing to spend money. The greatest thing I see in the people there is that - when something goes wrong, don't complain or shout, use your energy to fix the problem, and then everybody can take a break. I also see that when you see a problem, don't start taking out your wallet, thinking of buying things to fix the problem. Many people think like that simply because they are capable of spending money like that. But I find it better to look around, find a piece of equipment that can be slightly changed to fix the problem (you might call this ghetto, but I call it a common exercise of practicality).

That was a long piece of writing, and the days of me working at the bakery will be over tomorrow. Oh, and working there really told me how crappy labour work can be, better study hard at university!!