The day has come to say goodbye to what many called an old friend. Hostess announced that it would close its doors, after eight decades in business, due to a labor dispute with one of its largest unions. Though I could not predict the reasons for the final shut down of the baking giant, whose pastries had ludicrously long shelf lives that some speculated could outlast nuclear holocaust along with cockroaches, I was waiting for this day for thirteen years.
Labor disputes of this magnitude take a tremendous toll on all parties involved. Some seem outright gleeful that the unions pushed too hard and got, well, nothing. That may be so, as this blog doesn’t seek to address the issues surrounding the latest negotiations and lack thereof. But my personal experience leads me to believe that the inability of the union and Hostess to negotiate was more simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. Let me explain.
In a world of dirty little secrets, I have one. It was 1999 and I was an eager college student who recently left a good retail position with a local shop in search of more money and ladders to climb. Not having many connections in Seattle, I went to a big firm temp agency downtown that summer, who promptly found me my first temporary position. With Hostess Wonder Bread.
It’s fair to say that the two months I spent at the second-story office in the old industrial end of town shifted my naive perspective. I had assumed that any large corporation in 1999’s day and age would utilize computers, faxes, Muzac and the like. Perhaps they would have sweeping views, swanky hallways and stocked pantries (at least the pantry part for god’s sake!).
Hostess severely disappointed my young expectations. Clearly, they were saving money with their 1950s era approach… but were they? No computers to speak of. Women working on word processors (and a few typewriters, as I recall) and hand delivered pink memos. Necessary documents for truckers crossing the Canadian border were done in manilla envelopes with those little strings strung around the circular tab.
Over the courses of the two or so months, I filled the grunt work jobs with the carefree grin of an undergrad, happily delivering messages, churning out countless copies of letters and invoices and putting together the daily packets that contained the itemized products on each delivery truck for driver signature. Yes, I was movin’ on up (for 1955)…
But in 1999, a time when Microsoft was king in the Northwest and a budding up-start by some guy named Jeff Bezos was gaining serious retail traction online, the Hostess/Wonder Bread second story offices were anything but looking up. Dismal, cluttered and with the smell of old coffee ever present, the office was a throwback and most of its then-employees were, too.
There were few young people anywhere near my age, and the higher up’s (were they execs? VPs? managers? I haven’t a clue) donned black slacks, white shirts and red ties every day. Don’t get me wrong, the people I met were (for the most part) friendly and dutifully fulfilling their jobs- many had been there for years if not decades. But they were still dinosaurs in a changing world, rolling out Twinkies and the nutritionally-depleted Wonder Bread as if it were still the Post-War years.
And for the first time in my life, I experienced inefficiency on a grand scale. While other companies had in-office mail at the least, the workers in the Emerald City placed (expensive) telephone calls and sent their managers on planes and trains to conduct business. Though quaint (hey, clearly there is a need for face-to-face time that doesn’t include an iPad even today), it seemed absolutely frivolous to me at the time that they were wasting an opportunity to embrace technology in order to gain more efficiency. And this was coming from a 20-year old History undergrad who hardly possessed any tech savoir-faire herself. When I mentioned little things like, “Why can’t we just fax this over them?” to my co-workers, they would roll their eyes and say things like, “That’s just not what we do here. We’re paid to do it this way.”
I was offered a position with the company just weeks prior to the end of my temporary obligation. I kindly declined, knowing full well that I wasn’t going to learn anything there that would give me the career start or perspective I was looking for. My final day came about a week before it was due, when a superior made a pass at me in his office. I remember going home that evening and telling my then-boyfriend. I genuinely did not know what to do… I had never been in such an uncomfortable position and I dreaded the thought of going back. But I also disliked the thought of walking away from the position with just days left to fulfill… I was a go-getter out to prove my value.
I called the temp agency the next day, explaining what had taken place. Shocked, my liaison told me to not return. Within a few days, I had a new temp job with a smaller local outfit which I ended up turning into a full time position. I rarely gave Hostess much thought since then.
As the years have passed, Americans have grown even more obese than in 1999. Yet consumer health and nutrition advocacy groups have also made serious inroads on the business of white breads and corn syrupy-goodness of pastry treats with a shelf life of two years.
Am I shocked that Hostess crumbled? No. Was it all the fault of the union or the lack of negotiations. Hardly. At least from the perspective of 1999, the company had an inflexible, un-adaptive and antiquated system. Oh yeah, and they make atrocious ‘food’ best left to the cockroaches.
bonnie boglioli randall 