With Love and Quiches by Susan Axelrod

yet another truck. The new employees also became production workers, cake decorators, packers, cleaning crew, and all the other roles that evolved as we grew. We used to call them the “Motley Crew,” and I loved them all dearly. Many of them stayed with us for many years, growing up and into management positions before moving on.
    You’ll recall my earlier comment that we tried our best to keep our sense of humor, but running our own trucks was, admittedly, a headache. Today we have strict inventory control and can account for every brownie, but back then, we had a few entrepreneurial drivers who would, on occasion, help themselves to a few cakes with the hope of selling them on their own. Luckily we had loyal customers who would call to let us know about this. One driver, still just a kid with a license, approached Marvin Paige, of all people, offering him our quiches at a great discount. Big mistake—end of job. Another time, two of our drivers had an accident—with each other! On the highway! When one of them called to inform us, we asked, thinking they were doing a route together, “Who was driving?” The sheepish response: “Both of us.”
    My favorite driver story features a young man who was tall, very handsome, well muscled, and tattooed. Most of the time he wore a torn sleeveless T-shirt, even when it was cold outside. He was, at heart, a very gentle person in spite of his tough appearance. When he wasn’t making deliveries, I used to have him drive me around to my sales appointments in the city. He had this knack of maneuvering behind emergency vehicles and then speeding along when all the other traffic was stopped along the sides of the street. I would slide down in myseat with my hands covering my eyes, but I didn’t stop him from doing it because, I must admit, I was able to make more than twice as many stops as I did when driving myself around. I was able to make at least ten sales calls on the days when he drove me around, and he was also good company. One time we stopped for lunch at one of our customers’ establishments. Once we sat down, I noticed that half a dozen women from my neighborhood who knew me from my former life were seated nearby, and all of them were staring at me with this hunk with decidedly dropped jaws. All I did was smile and wave, happy to give them something to gossip about.
    Then there was Jimmy (not the baker), another driver who used one of our trucks to go out on dates because he didn’t have a car of his own. He also used it to go upstate with his father to pick up a load of Christmas trees during the holidays—only he never asked permission.
    On occasion we found ourselves bailing one or two of our drivers out of jail. Nothing too heavy, all minor stuff, but we were all part of the Love and Quiches family, and I felt responsible for them all! We always gave our employees the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, saying, jokingly, that you had to practically be a murderer to get fired from Love and Quiches. Of course, now we hold our employees to another standard, but in those days, we were all learning together and things were quite a bit more casual.
    But what we still didn’t know could fill volumes. I remember so very clearly that workers were smoking on the production floor! I have never smoked, but almost all young people at that time did. It was cool to smoke, and I didn’t know enough at first to stop them. And we would keep the doors open on hot days, another great sin. This was obviously before stricter rules became the protocol. Yet we were getting regular unannounced audits from the New York State Department of Agriculture, and we always got good scores. It is hard to fathom how we could have been so ignorant of how things should have been done, given how we operate today. Now we spend as much time cleaning and sanitizing as we do producing, with the production areas all separated fromoutside areas with curtains, doors, and anterooms. I am grateful that