The wide variety of species infesting the bakery is innumerable, but alas, even more food is spoiled by the humans. Each workday begins by me grappling with an overflowing trash, swirling with flies, recklessly stuffed and blithely ignored by teenage employees and managers alike. Both sinks are buried by crusty pans, greasy silicon muffin tins, and plastic containers still holding globs of mayonnaise and handfuls of pasta that were too...fatiguing, I guess?...to have emptied, which then proceed to clog the drains, which then begets the next round of "Not It!" as everyone continues to use the sink, filling it to the brim with swampy dill-scented bacteria-water.
Back at the prep table, I sort through necrotic raspberries, wipe off lids evidently cursed to eternal stickiness, hold my breath to search the mold-ridden fridge, and am spiritually deadened, again, to find raw chicken on a shelf high above all the pastries.
Like the man throwing starfish back into the sea despite the futility of saving them all, I try to at least gesture towards actual sanitation. Some people fear civilization will be done in by nuclear war, or a supervirus, or the apocalypse; I believe the tragedy of the commons will eventually utterly erode humanity. So grinds on the summer of cutting melon for minimum wage.
