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General Information: Overview: Press Clips: Hard Cases Find Soft Spot In Sweet Place

Evelyn Nieves
The New York Times
November 16, 1997

YONKERS -- GARRY NASH, the Greyston Bakery troubleshooter, was having a double barrel day. A glitch in the machinery had brought the day's brownie production -- 8,000 pounds destined for Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream -- to a halt. With the bakery's 45 employees just coming off a month of seven-day weeks to fill holiday orders for Balducci's and Sardi's, would it be fair to ask them to work yet another extra shift to make up for lost time?

Sitting in an upstairs office, he pondered the possibilities. In any other business, there would be no question; the workers would work. But the Greyston Bakery is not like any other business. ''I think the guys have earned their time off,'' Mr. Nash said, nodding his head in the paper shower cap everyone on the production floor is required to wear.

He is known in the bakery as a big old softy, but he has his reasons. While the Greyston Bakery specializes in expensive fancy desserts like the Grand Marnier cake, chocolate cheesecake and the opera cake (too rich to describe) in the Balducci's catalogue, its hires the poorest of the poor, veterans of many struggles: homelessness, drug addiction, prison, single parenthood. It's an effort just to make it to work every day. And Mr. Nash knows it, having been a homeless shelter resident and recovering crack addict when he came to the bakery eight years ago.

''The shelter I was in,'' he remembered, ''had a sign on the wall: 'The Greyston Bakery is hiring.' I thought that must be an unusual place to recruit employees from a homeless shelter.''

Of course, it is. The bakery, which sends the aroma of sweet butter through a block of warehouses and factories by the Hudson , is run by the Greyston Foundation, which provides permanent housing for former shelter residents, low-cost day care, drug and alcohol counseling, and, soon, housing for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. (The foundation, within walking distance of the bakery in the city's tough southwest side, is the brainchild of Bernard Glassman, abbot of the Zen Community of New York.)

MR. NASH went from the brownie line, where every one starts, to a supervisor's job, in charge of hiring, while juggling his role as a single father of twins who are now almost 5 years old. ''Greyston helped me a lot,'' he said. ''They've given me interest-free loans, they've been very understanding when I have to take the kids to the doctor or what have you.''

The bakery, which pays $8 an hour on average, with medical benefits and, as of this year, a pension plan, hires anyone who walks in the door for a job, assuming there are openings.

This isn't easy. Turnover is high, especially within the first three months when employees are on probation. Two out of five quit. ''We don't see that as a failure on our part,'' said Julius Walls, the general manager. ''We know we hire people who would've been weeded out in the interview process. We don't weed.''

He remembered one recent tough case of a new employee who just couldn't make it to work. One day, he called to say he had missed work because his grandmother had died. Two days later, he had that same grandmother call to say he couldn't come in because he was sick.

The next week, the employee -- he was still an employee -- called to say his grandmother hadn't really died, but his mother was having alcohol problems and could he make an appointment to discuss this with Mr. Walls privately? The day of the appointment, he never showed up.

THEN he called again. ''I said, 'O.K., now, you don't have a job but let's talk about what you can do to keep the next one,' '' Mr. Walls said.

Not a half hour after he told the story, he excused himself to answer a phone call. It was from that ex-employee. ''A month later, he's calling to ask for a job again,'' Mr. Walls said, obviously torn between pity and his instincts as a manager. But in the spirit of the bakery's philosophy, he said, ''I'm going to let the supervisors decide.'' And knowing Garry Nash, he said with a wry smile, he has a feeling he knows what's going to happen.

 


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