The Cookie Factory

It’s the middle of January and I’m in Maui. As in Hawaii. How did THAT happen??!

Well, before I get into all that, I have to explain why it has been so long since I’ve written anything. I have written very few emails in the past few months. We didn’t send out a single Christmas card or letter this holiday season – the first time I’ve EVER missed since I’ve been an adult.

And I haven’t written a single blog since November.

So why the long delay? Well, besides the fact that I’m getting a tad bit lazy in my old age?

It’s because I took a seasonal job, which started in October. This was completely on a whim, mind you.

Evidently, my whims are not to be trusted.

My friend and neighbor, Suzy, took a seasonal job at Cheryl’s Cookies, a local “cookie factory” (as Vince calls it) that had gone national when it was purchased by 1-800Flowers a few years ago. But the main office and actual cookie factory is still down the road a piece in Westerville, which is near me.

When Suzy told me they were looking for additional seasonal help in Customer Service, I figured, Eh, why not? And went in on that aforementioned whim, applied, and was hired on the spot.

Fortunately, the job did not require me to speak to actual customers; I only had to respond to emails. This was a good thing, because I would not have been interested in dealing with upset customers over the phone.

The job started with a two-week training for four hours a day. And then, once we were considered trained, we moved to six-hour days. This was to get us conditioned for the 9+-hour day, six days a week efforts we ended up putting in once Thanksgiving passed and we headed into the mad holiday rush.

Who knew cookies were such a hot commodity these days? I really thought it was the one time of the year that people actually baked cookies at home.

Not so much.

We were told we could expect about 500 emails a day during the month of December, which is why they hire additional seasonal help. A normal number of emails might be anywhere from1-200.

Imagine our consternation, then, when we came in to five THOUSAND emails instead of five hundred. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t make those numbers go down!

Problem was, the company implemented a new computer program/system a few months prior and the bugs had not yet been worked out. So we had production problems. And distribution problems. And shipping problems. We even ran out of cookies.

So we apologized. And gave back money. And apologized some more.

But we persevered. And, eventually, the numbers slowed down. The general manager held a meeting to discuss the problems and to thank everyone for their efforts. And the CEO of 1-800Flowers even flew in to do the same.

So it was definitely not business as usual. Which is a shame. Because I never want to go through that again.

I barely had time to put up a Christmas tree. I hurriedly shopped for all my gifts on Cyber Monday and, if I didn’t order gifts that day, I picked up gift cards when I shopped for groceries. And I only did that when we were completely out of staples like bread or milk.

I was exhausted most of the time. And the dog didn’t know what hit her – she had been so used to me being home to walk her whenever the urge came over her. Frankly, I think she likes to go out so often just to sniff out all the creatures that have been walking around her neighborhood rather than simply to tinkle.

But poor Maggie didn’t get that chance over the past three months. When I finally got home to take her out, she was desperately lunging at the door. So there was no sniffing pee mail at first.

Anyway, so that’s what I’ve been doing lately.

I apologize to those who normally get a card and a Christmas letter from us. I am sorry that I haven’t been in better touch. And I know I’ve missed some opportunities to write some good blogs.

Now I can’t even remember what those blogs were going to be about!

So I guess I’ll start from scratch.

And my next blog? Well, I guess I can tell you how we came to be vacationing in Hawaii.