I know. I know. I tell you all these funny stories about food, but I know what you’re really wondering. “So, Bakerina, how does it feel to be back at the box factory?”
Funny you should ask. It feels rather like “Bookshop,” a sketch from Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album. I used to work in a bookshop and I was afraid of my life turning into this, but life at the box factory imitates Python more than the bookshop ever did. This little vignette encapsulates perfectly the day I had today. In fact, this little vignette encapsulates perfectly every day at LuthorCorp.
The scene thus far: Terry Jones is the customer, John Cleese is the proprietor. Jones has already tortured Cleese by requesting “David Coperfield” and “Grate Expectations” by Edmund Wells and “Rarnaby Budge” by Charles Dikkens, “the well-known Dutch author.”
Customer: I wonder if you --
Proprietor: No, I’m sorry --
Customer: No, I saw it --
Proprietor: No, I’m sorry, we’re closing for lunch --
Customer: No, no, it’s there! I saw it over there! Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds!
Proprietor (warily): Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds?
Customer: That’s right.
Proprietor: O-L-S-E-N?
Customer: Yes.
Proprietor: B-I-R-D-S?
Customer: Yes, that’s right.
Proprietor: Yes, well, we do have that…
Customer: The expurgated version.
(beat)
Proprietor: I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that…
Customer: The expurgated version.
Proprietor (losing it): The expurgated version of Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds?
Customer: The one without the gannet.
Proprietor: The one without—they’ve all got the gannet! It’s a standard British bird! The gannet’s in all the books!
Customer: Well, I don’t like them. They wet their nests.
Proprietor: All right! I’ll remove it! [rips] Any other birds you don’t like?
Customer: I don’t like the robin.
Proprietor: The robin! Right! The robin! [rips] Any others you don’t like, any others?
Customer: The nuthatch?
Proprietor: The nuthatch, the nuthatch, the nuthatch...here we are! [rips] No gannets, no robins, no nuthatches! There’s your book!
Customer (indignantly): I can’t buy that! It’s torn!
And I also agree with you. We need good outrageous stories to tell over dinner. And lest I sound like too much of a kvetch, I do appreciate that I have a job at a time when many, many people do not. It’s just that having spent a month doing something that was really satisfying (but paid nothing), it’s a bit of an adjustment to go back to spending the day with people who want six impossible things before breakfast.
With “all this,” we’d have no stories to tell over dinner. Nothing to commiserate about. No common enemy.