Job Satisfaction

I love my job for a lot of reasons. I get to wear a hat to work. On powder days my boss tells me to come in late. I get an unlimited supply of lifesaving nugs, the best possible insurance against bonking. I arrive, I work nonstop until finished, and I leave--I'm not at the mercy of the clock or the whims of customers. Every afternoon my arms and back ache, which convinces me that I'll somehow become a rock climber this summer. When I asked for a couple of days off to go to Cali, my boss bent over, touched his toes, and said, "Look. I'm flexible."

All great, sure, but one of the main reasons I love my job is the constant sensory input. As I lay waste to fifty-pound bags of oats or shredded coconut, the smells permeate the air. I hated arriving home from the restaurant reeking of fry oil; I even had to designate a jacket and a scarf as work-specific because I didn't want the rank odor on any other clothes. Now I come home smelling like granola and forget to even wash the spots of honey and peanut butter off my forearms. Measuring and mixing are agreeable tasks. I dole out scoops of hemp seeds, their shells clinging to my shirt. ("Before you get any ideas, they're not viable," joked my boss on the first day, and I, the naif, totally didn't get it.) When I'm wrestling with dried fruit, apricots and tart cherries are the best, because they're delicious, and bananas are the worst, because they're sticky and cloyingly sweet. Once in high school I let a banana squish around in my backpack for a week and now the smell of ripe bananas kind of repulses me. I drag a hand through sunflower seeds with their husks like exoskeletons, flax seeds with their beetle shine, and sesame seeds, which like to congregate at the bottom of a mix bin. I work a paint stirrer through buckets of nut butter, the hateful sheen of oil floating on top promising a layer of cement on the bottom. Once I was in a hurry with a measuring cup and splashed peanut butter oil in both eyes, but escaped with only bleary contacts, thus proving that I'm probably not even a little bit allergic (a big plus in the industry). Between rolling sheets I dart away to drink lukewarm coffee and nibble the trimmings from the previous day's labor.  We alternate between listening to my eclectic and sometimes embarrassing iPod shuffle and the "butt rock" Pandora station preferred by the others, sneaking the volume up in increments until Kate emerges from the office to turn it down. The atmosphere is decidedly chill. Sometimes I fondle the finished product in its matte plastic packaging and fancy labels and think in wonderment, I made this.

Granola porn
Courtesy of our website

And then when I've finished rolling out 105 dozen bars, I stroll home and try to decide what to do with the remaining four hours of daylight. Bike ride? Make dinner? Mail some more nugs to loved ones across the country? Or just mosey over to the pub and see how many friends are there today?