Breaking The Bread
When I was in college, I had a job at an Italian fast-food place with a reputation for its breadsticks. They came in frozen and needed some time to thaw. To help them defrost, we’d take a giant aluminum baking sheet, spread them out in a single layer with no spaces, cover it with a plastic bag, then leave it to sit in the walk-in overnight. The next day, you’d have to get a pair of tongs and move each stick to a new tray, turning them over, then cover the new tray with the bag and let them sit on racks for a couple of hours before brushing on the garlic butter sauce.
This was tedious enough that you’d usually be ready to brush the butter on the first tray as soon as you turned the last tray. I was given this task for the first time one morning and just did not want to deal with it. I realized if I put the second tray upside down on top of the first one then turned it over and took the first tray out, I got exactly the same results. Blew the boss’s mind when I did the three-hour job in about 15 minutes. I was given a $0.05/hour raise.