Joanne was a little startled at her supervisor’s willingness to take on a new staff member, sight unseen, outside a vetting protocol, like so many others who’d come and since gone. Joanne certainly wasn’t going to protest such cavalier recruiting practices.
The following day, Gidelia accompanied Joanne on her morning commute, cathartically in business attire.
Gidelia called the meatpacking factory foreman the evening before, advising today had been be her last day, a virtue of her casual employment status.
On the drive with Joanne that first day, Gidelia felt a deep hopefulness. Not yet celebration, as the day ahead could hold anything, she could readily acknowledge.
Gidelia wasn’t immune to what pitfalls those before her had faced in this workplace, a factor she’d weighed considerably, but swiftly, in making the decision to part with her meatpacking employer, in the hope of greener, yet more uncertain, pastures.
There was a glimmer, however, this new path, of which she was taking that morning with Joanne at the wheel, could be the next step she took to meaningfully making it in America.
Gidelia was practical enough in her muted excitement to not jump ahead too far, indulging fanciful dreams of bringing her family to live with her, enjoying a prosperous life, which no longer seemed within remote grasp back home.
She trusted, without having set foot in this office, whatever travails may be infusing the day-to-day operations, she could go head-to-head with whatever headwinds would otherwise keep her from her dreams of prosperity.
She could impose herself on the situation. Her headstrong, resolute determinedness prevailing to manifest her will.
She knew she was feisty, a fighter, and could will her desired outcome in this instance into reality. At stake, after all, was the future health and well-being of her and her family, so uncertain for so long.
From the outset, she was thrust into the cauldron of hectic phone calls, getting used to software she was gaslit into conviction she was familiar with, in lieu of actual training.
The saving grace was her friendship - Joanne a glorious valve of silliness to debrief with after a day’s work bordering on ridicule.
Among the hectic chaos, Gidelia had a clear-sightedness.
It was possible, as gruelling and under-supported as she’d been on this first day, that if this were the worst of it, she could adapt.
It might take a week of high stress, offset by splitting a bottle of wine with Joanne to decompress at night before plunging in again.
For now she was unmoored, from any sense of context for how to handle calls until she’d had the chance to put the caller on hold and find someone free to guide her
The stress was initially high, but as the days strung together, and she became more familiar to the processes and personalities, she relaxed into a routine she found not unpleasant.
The timbre of an incoming call instilled dread, just for her inability to effectively field a knowledgeable answer for the myriad queries.
After several months, and many seasoned staff having left, seemingly fed-up with the chaos, Gidelia recognised she was actually beginning to become one of the more senior staff. New recruits came - and just as often went - finding herself in the role of training them.
The mania was ever present, and she largely managed to ride above it. She recognised errors were causing them to double and triple handle tasks previously completed because of errors, growing more outwardly impatient.
She expressed to those far longer serving then her that the processes in place weren’t effectively working - they seemed to be going around in circles. This culminated in a meeting with senior management, Gidelia, Joanne and some other colleagues, to express their thoughts as to how best improve processes effectively and efficiently.
Gidelia lost her temper at the meeting. Not toward anyone in particular, just the inanity of the existing status quo. The senior manager interpreted this as a passion to improve processes, a voice speaking up to try and mitigate problems before they occurred. Gidelia was animated and heated, proving herself a problem-solver.
Gidelia's standing only advanced with the Pud Inc. offices. She'd been promoted within a span of months to oversee the operations for the manufacturing inputs to later be distributed to the 260 Puderia rice pudding parlour franchises across the Midwest and Appalachian states.
The new role largely called for coordinating personnel, of which the churn in staff turnover was laying bare fundamental deficiencies which management were wilfully ignoring.
Management seemed focused on prying open opportunities to appeal to and accommodate new franchisees, keeping budgeted costs static. Simply, more money needed to be spent to recruit more hands on deck on a permanent basis, retaining the knowledge base, rather than it accreting, then evaporating, as staff came on a temporary contract, then left, knowing they could be paid the same for less aggravation elsewhere.
The prestige associated with Puderia was not comparable to a Pink Berry. Better correspondent to Del Taco or Wendy's, as if it were caught in a time warp anywhere within the first half the 1970s.
Puderia still attracted franchisees, ostensibly desperate souls floating amid the landscape. Maybe looking for a kind of redemption or salvation, instead settling on shouldering the responsibility of a Puderia franchise. Uncertain why, but happening, nevertheless. Maybe they needed responsibility. Maybe it might've kept them from stagnancy, prey to creeping addictions. Anaesthetising a numb soreness of the soul, best described as a meaningful attachment to a divine wholeness. But detached by modernity and colourful advertising, subverting their senses, as to be kept separate from connection and revelation.
A Puderia franchise owner would know something was wrong, but only if asked. When an ache is dull, like the proverbial frog in the gradually boiled pot, it's effect can be elusive. An enveloping ,molasses-like viscosity of despair, masqueraded in a near-term sweetness, damaging on a longer time horizon.
Gidelia didn't sense this within the dull, quietly despairing, yet hopeful eyes of franchisees, paying their dues in the Puderia central office.
In another era, these prospective franchisees may be nomads, in parties of wagon trains, throwing a Hail Mary westward ho. Antithetically, upon signing franchise contracts, any soul-searching, wayward thoughts, would be tied to a franchise in small-town America. Likely a pocket they had no previous ties to, supplanted in the hopes a rice pudding parlour was exactly what that community needed.
A cavalier capitalist, imported from a staunchly leftist-run regime. Barricading her people, her family, from progress. Here she had room to spread her colourful wings, to defend the inherent good of the individual to make their nest of gold thistles and trim.
Where else did the opportunity exist to hold out hope of her family joining her here, rescued from the anti-capitalist authoritarian regime.
As a cereal grain, rice is the humanity's most widely-consumed staple, trailing third to sugarcane and maize.
Yet as both sugarcane and maize are used for ends besides human subsistence, rice stands as the singular most important cereal grain for nutritional purpose, occupying a fifth of the planetary kilojoules consumed, tracing its cultivar origins two and half millennia before the Common Era.
What could be passed among myriad cultures for rice pudding were vast. It invariably resembled a combo of water, rice, perhaps milk or its derivative for creaminess.
When in the guise of a dessert, a sweetener, whether sugar or an analogue. A custard-like viscosity via a thickening agent, whether a starch, flour, gelatine or even egg.
Depending on the global variability, a sweet spice, such as cinnamon or nutmeg may be sprinkled, or a flavouring added, such as vanilla.
In order,