Why I Don't Eat Donuts

By Brad Hannah <brad(at)jays(dot)net>
Sock Monkey Publishing™
© 2001, 2002. All rights reserved.

Most people don't give much consideration to donuts. They're a tasty little crème/cherry/marshmallow filled and/or chocolate/vanilla/caramel frosted breakfast pastry, good with some coffee or milk early in the morning to start your day with the recommended USDA of sugar. However, there is a whole life behind breakfast pastries that the early morning commuter does not see. Behind closed doors at Dunkin' Donuts, some poor bastard has to create these succulent delicacies in the wee small hours before the road construction crews and traffic police arrive to eat their daily fill. I however, have seen the horror of donut-makery first hand, for I was once that poor bastard.

My hometown was the nesting place of a quaint little 24 hour donut, coffee, sub, and video rental shop called Bakery Buddy. It was a happy little mom & pop operation that had not yet been steamrolled into extinction by sterile, faceless, Starbucks-esque mega-corporations. As a high-schooler, I used to go there quite frequently, as it was one of about 3 places in town you could go at 4 a.m. One summer, the BB was advertising an opening in the overnight shift. The pay was pretty good for a fast food type job, and I had no pressing need to sleep while it was dark out, so I decided to give it a whirl. I figured it would be better to learn while I was still young whether or not I had the fortitude to work overnight shifts. Surprisingly, (to me) I was given the job almost on the spot. I would later surmise that I must have been the only person stupid enough to want the job, and that the person I was replacing had either died of exhaustion and/or despair, or perhaps gnawed his leg off and beaten the manager with it to escape.

Of my first (and only) eight hour shift at the Bakery Buddy, seven and a half of those were spent glazing, filling, or frosting donuts. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me that in order for donuts to be fresh at 5:30, they have to be made by the poor schmuck who works at 4:00, but I was not terribly bright at that time of my life and expected to do little other than work the counter and watch movies on the in-house VCR. Making donuts gets boring after about 5, so by the time I was sick of the job, I only had about 995 donuts left to make. It was going to be a long night.

Chocolate and caramel frosted donuts are made by throwing the unfrosted pastry down into the vat of semi-melted frosting, then retrieving it (with your bare hands) before in sinks too far down into the sticky morass. Imagine your kitchen sink full of thick, gooey fudge, which you must stir almost constantly with a giant spoon to keep it from developing a layer of skin on top (while saying double, double, toil and trouble and cackling like an old crone for comedic effect). Now, large quantities of chocolate (especially heated) has a certain smell to it that is pleasant for about 10 minutes, then becomes a choking miasma for the remainder of the night. The inside of a fudge shop x50 is about the stench I'm trying to convey here.

Glazed donuts are by far the nastiest to make. While you can make frosted ones while getting only a minimal amount of caramely goo on your hands, glazed donuts have to be completely submerged. The glazing trough resembles a giant paint tray, with a deep end on one side and a draining rack on the other. Have you ever sneezed onto your hand, and noticed how the snot will sling to your fingers in little ropy strands? That's what glazing does as well, but it's all over your hand and a little way up your arm as well. It also has left-over chinks of yicky crap that falls off the donuts such as coconut, sprinkles, and little bits of dough. If feels about as good as cleaning the gunk out of a pumpkin, only more sticky. I think my old wristwatch is still in that stuff somewhere.

My dedication to the pastry arts was not strong enough to keep me at that job. I finished my first shift and told them that I would not be coming back for a second. They said that it was ok, and the a lot of people quit even before their first night is finished, so I didn't feel quite so bad then. The Bakery Buddy has since closed, probably due to numerous health code violations involving people's arms in the garnishings, and been replaced by a fast food Taiwanese restaurant (which looks pretty darn silly since the sign is still a chubby Italian guy in a chef hat).

I chalked up that job to "life experience" since I was never paid for my eight hours of disgusting torture, and went on to seek greener pastures. However, I still cringe whenever I see a Krispy Kreme, and only eat Hostess' mini donettes, which are untouched by human hands.