When You Give a Co-worker a Cookie

With a tentative click I shift my truck to park. Nothing but rolling green strawberry fields stretch out to every side. I was proud of my new ability to identify a strawberry plant. Stubby dark green bushel, small white blossoms, three leaves popping from each stem. I honestly don’t know if I’d ever seen one until I came here, but something about that little piece of aggie knowledge felt like a badge of belonging in this place. Why yes, of course I know those are strawberry plants! As long as no one quizzed me on the characteristics of a broccoli crop, I could pass for a regular here.

I steal one last quick glance at the rudimentary map I’d sketched- yes, this should be the place! Agrojal 12.

Piece of advice Number One for a new intern on the job: Be ready to be a little lost on the first day. And first week. Possibly the whole first month. Just psych yourself up mentally for that and be ready to roll with it.

It’s almost impossible to tell one strawberry field from another. Identical rows of raised beds strapped under black tarp, identical harvest machines rolling laboriously through rows of produce, seemingly identical teams of workers buzzing ahead of the harvester and plucking out fruit at expert speed. The same scene unfolded no matter which field you happened to roll up to. And to my great chagrin, there was never any identification maker that I could spot. No prominent sign posted announcing the name or owner of the field you had stumbled upon.

But the reasoning behind the lack of signage had quickly become clear to me. Scott had so kindly compiled a collection of maps and contact information for all the fields in order to orient myself in this new place. However, in attempting to follow them I’d soon discovered his packet to be completely useless. Not only do the foremen in charge of each field change yearly, but so do the actual physical locations of the fields themselves. Shuffled up like a deck of cards, I’d been dealt a totally new hand of fields and foremen than the ones Scott had worked with last year.

But I’d managed to find the Agrojal 12 field once before, and reassured by the chicken scratch map that I’d sketched up, I pull on my hat and jump out of the truck in search of Joaquin.

I survey the field. Dusty forklifts heave pallets of fruit onto trailers. Men heave crates onto the harvest machines for inspection. Berry pickers cart through the rows with their strawberry crates at top pace. Everyone is Mexican, and Spanish slang flies through the air as they work. I already hold an insane amount of respect for these workers and the expert speed with which they harvest the strawberries despite the dry west coast summer heat.

And then there’s me: the skinny, blonde 22 year old intern they sent to oversee the whole process. The sole representative in Santa Maria of the company buying all this fruit.

I’m sheepishly aware that one of these things is not like the others.

Before this job, I had had zero experience working in agriculture or produce harvesting (as I mentioned, I’d only just learned to identify a strawberry plant). But I was starting to get a real grasp on the production process: Berries are harvested daily from the twenty-plus fields scattered around the city. We’re talking thousands of pounds per day. It all gets loaded palette by palette onto a trailer bed and then trucked into one of three cooling facilities to be prepped for transport to the processing plant. At the end of the day, the loads of chilled berries are hauled in semis down to the plant where they become the beginning of jams & jellies.

Of course, Scott had already previously explained this whole process to me as well, but that was before I’d ever set foot in Santa Maria. Before I’d seen for myself the vastness of the operation I was undertaking. You really had to be there living it to get a grasp on how all the moving parts worked together.

And now here I was in charge of it all.

If the fruit was too muddy, it was my job to lecture the foreman on it.

If the loaders were too slow, it was on me to speed them up.

If the trucks were late, I was supposed to get in the gruff faces of the grubby drivers and reprimand them for it.

Piece of advice Number Two: Don’t go getting a big head as the new intern on campus. A little helping of humility goes a long way, especially when there are certain cultural & lingual barriers that exist between you and your colleagues.

I had become painfully aware of those barriers on my first day, when I showed up to the cooler office like a schoolgirl only to realize that I would be the only young white female in a room full of burly Hispanic men, most of them going on forty. My basic Spanish comprehension was only getting me so far- five times I’d already had to ask Martin to talk slower so I could understand. “F Bombs” were as common as coffee in the break room. Some foremen continued dodging any opportunity to meet with me, or even answer my phone calls.

I didn’t need the teacher of experience to school me into realizing how insulting it would feel to these men for a naive white little intern to walk in and start giving orders, making demands. So while I didn’t lack confidence in my ability to do this job and do it well, I was very strategic in my approach. I was going to have to earn their trust somehow if we were going to get things done. No booming voice, prominent physical presence, or show of authority was going to aid in this process (not that I had any of those credits to my name).

And that brings me to piece of advice Number Three: Home baked goods make a great catalyst for connecting in a foreign workplace! Soft sugar cookies with swirling strawberry buttercream to be exact.

Was it an unsophisticated, possibly childlike approach to gaining their trust? Yes, probably. But it was working! I’d already delivered a few plates to the men at the cooler office and since then I’d felt the tension in our conversations dial back a few notches. After my first cookie delivery, my conversations with Joseph the office manager had become very cordial and respectful, almost like talking to a granddad. The cooling floor supervisor Roy was always responsive to my requests for updates on fruit deliveries at the cooler. Cecil was kindly sending me daily updates on berry estimates for the week, even before I asked for them. Who can deny the magic in an innocent offering of home baked cookie goodness?

I’d started making cookie delivery rounds to the foremen of each individual strawberry field as well. Today it was Joaquin, the foreman at Agrojal 12 field. He had actually been very good-natured and easy going when I met him last week and it was a relief. He was much younger than most of the other foremen I had met, closer to my own age. Easy going, with a good sense of humor, he had given me his assurance that if I needed assistance to just say the word. So the cookies for him today were more of a thank you than a peace offering.

Before beginning my trek across the Agrojal 12 field, I reach back into my truck, grabbing my clipboard and the small bag of cookies I’d baked that morning. My heavy steel-toed boots caked up steadily with mud as I set off through the stretching rows of strawberry beds, eyes peeled for Joaquin and his team.

He was hard to recognize- I’d met so many people over the past few days, and I was terrible with remembering faces. But I found him planted in a stony stance at the edge of the field, supervising the berry picking.

“Hola!” I called as I approached. He regarded me with an unchanging glance.

“How goes the picking?” I asked cheerfully in very American-accented Spanish.

“It’s good.”

My cheerfulness faltered slightly. Such a short, almost curt reply. Maybe this wasn’t a great day for a field visit. My hands flexed anxiously, still clutching the little bag of cookies.

“How are the berry numbers for today?”

“Good.”

What was that note of confusion in his voice? Why did he seem so on edge? He hadn’t been like this at all when I’d met him last week. I decided to go right for the gold.

“I made some strawberry cookies and I had some extras on hand. Here, these are for you!”

I produced the bag with the three pretty little cookies inside, offering it to him. The transparent wrapping of the package left no question as to what inside, but his hesitancy to accept them couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Gracias.” One word again. Still a note of confusion.

This was not going well.

I walked along to the next harvest machine with him, punctuating the awkward silence with a few more questions about the day’s work. Nothing more than short responses from him. My self esteem gave an unheard sigh of exasperation. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of managing these work relationships.

I spent some time up on the harvest machine, inspecting the berries, looking for excessive mud. Production seemed smooth, and there wasn’t much reason for me to stay and observe.

“Well, I’d better head out to the next field,” I said in order to dismiss myself. This visit had definitely been a bust, and I was feeling very sheepish about my cookie offering.

I mustered up a smile. “Thanks for your help Joaquin!”

He stared at me blankly. And then finally comprehension cracked across his face in a wide grin.

“I’m not Joaquin,” He said.

“What?!”

He laughed. “I’m not Joaquin! I’m Jose. His brother! Joaquin is working over on the east side of the field today.”

His brother. My face burned an embarrassing shade of red. A silly American girl, total stranger, walks up to you in the middle of a field and gives you cookies? Goodness sake, had he thought I was flirting? Ugh, no wonder he was confused!

And that brings me to my last piece of advice: Make sure you’re talking to the right person before you give an overly friendly greeting accompanied by a gift of cookies.