I wrote this on: Tuesday November 25, 2008

I want everyone to love good bread.

I showed up after the office was closed. The office closes early on Sundays now so I didn’t have to wait too long. I was hoping that the checks I had ordered would be in because you see, I needed to write some checks.

The checks weren’t in but I really wasn’t actually there for the checks because there was actually no money. I was there because I ran into someone at the bakery.

Whenever I have to leave the office and the bakery can be on the way, I make sure that it ends up on my route. When I walked in, there was the cousin to the owner of the real estate company that I work for on a part time basis. I had just done about fifty custom invites for him and he mentioned that he saw a book that someone made up will all the things that happened sixty years ago. Also, the book’s cover had a variety of pictures of the person whose birthday it just happened to be. He asked if I could make one for the person whose birthday was coming up. He asked if it was a lot of work.

The last thing that I wanted was more work but the guy is a friend and does a lot for the neighborhood. I tried to explain that what he expected for an end product would most likely determine whether it would be a lot of work or not. I also let him know that if I received all the text already typed that it would be easier for me. He told me that, it would be typed.

I expected that all his information was going to be at the real estate office when I got there on the following Thursday but it wasn’t. It showed up the Thursday after that. The book was four sheets of run-of-the-mill plain white paper with a hole punch in the top left corner and tied with a piece of pink yarn. Included, were six photographs: two in color, the rest in black and white and some had tears and some had creases. I believe my shoulders shrank at the sight of what I was given.

And that is why I was really at the office on a Sunday afternoon. My office routine is to check around the office to see if I can identify and problems that people might be keeping from me. During my walk around I noticed what appeared to be the entire stack of custom invites that I had done a week and a day before; invites that included an R.S.V.P. date that would come due in six days. These where the same invites that I rushed to get done so that close too a normal response time would be given. I wasn’t pleased by the sight of them.

I trudged up to my office and scanned all the photos and then designed the cover of the book. I then tried to print it but for some reasons the colored photos wouldn’t print right, after some trial and error, I figured out if was because they were rotated. I then went home.

The next day I printed out four copies of the cover and discovered that now the black and white photos were now the ones not printing properly, so I redesigned the cover so that all the photos would be square. It wasn’t as visually interesting but it was still good. I then set about scanning the information pages from sixty years ago and covered them to editable text. I also gleaned more information from the internet.

I scattered related pictures around the pages and also threw in some design elements that I carried across the pages.

I then finished the advertising that was due a day earlier because of Thanksgiving.

I owner then walked through my office door and asked me something that I have since forgotten. I mentioned the still not mailed invitations. She then explained that the mailing list that she was going to use was messed up but that the posters and the fliers I had done were up or passed out. She also assured me that the invites would be mailed.

I didn’t even bother to ask if she thought they would actually arrive in time.

Usually, I would be quite angry that my effort went for naught but I had reasoned with myself previously that I shouldn’t get too upset over other people’s failures. I had done the best that I could have and I had certainly left everyone else enough time to get things out on time.

I’ll just send an undiscounted bill for the invites that will most likely go unpaid and forget about it.


…

All the stuff I brought in for the bake sale sold out; but then someone had put a price of two bucks on each my wonderful loaves of bread. I only knew one of the people that had bought them and the next business day I asked what he thought about it. He said that it was “Very good, like an artisan bread that you would buy in a local bakery.”

It pleased me a bit.