July of freshman summer, I stood before a smorgasbord of pastries. Mimi, the owner of Missouri Bakery had hired me and rescued me from a boring summer. Rather than senselessly staring at my ceiling, I spent the day on my feet sweeping up flour, sugaring cream puffs, and refilling tray after tray of cookies. Within a week, I mastered stocking and Mimi allowed me to sell. .
The store might as well have been the oven. While blistering heat emanated from the kitchen, I noticed that nothing had any prices or descriptions listed anywhere, and the cash register, more like an ancient typewriter, did not calculate change. Customers packed the place. Each one demanded superb service and the highest quality bread and sweets. Furthermore, I found myself surrounded by the five prettiest co-workers I had ever seen! My anxiety nearly reached its boiling point.
Customers started out as my Achilles' heel. My first, a grumpy old woman, exploded when I accidentally counted her change wrong. I struggled with the change drawer two or three times before I counted back the correct amount. Right then, the register became my enemy and obsession. In counting change, the cliché, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," transformed into a proverb. My ritual mess-ups forced me to seek out the secret change-making method. After so much trial and error, I figured out the pattern: count up backwards pennies to nickels and dimes, nickels and dimes to quarters, and finally, quarters to dollars. Not only did I decrease my time at the register, my math skills improved with each sale. Customers could pay me $10.14 for a $4.64 total and I could give them $5.50 without thinking. .
Hordes of tourists made Saturdays our busiest days. They made the bakery feel like the Battle of Thermopylae with the six of us as the three hundred Spartans. We watched from behind the counters as countless foreigners assembled to challenge our small bakery.
