This nostalgic bit of my past was brought to mind while listening to a recent podcast about Biscuits.
When I was in college I got a job, due to my advanced years [hmph!], at Burger Chef. I'd guess that most of the employees were High School students and they were in need of older employees that could operate dangerous machinery as Burger Chef was in the process of being sold off to a new fast food chain, Hardee's, which sold a freshly sliced Big Roast Beef sandwich. Said slicer, the dangerous machinery, needed to be operated by employees that were 18 or older.
Working at a fast food restaurant was quite a conundrum. My parents were quite frugal and we were brought up to not waste food (or anything really). Fast food, and Hardee's in particular, made sandwiches for the potential customer and, if they weren't purchased within 15-20 minutes, were thrown out. I remember asking the manager about all this waste and being told that company policy, and furthermore, the Health Department, didn't allow it to be given to the hungry. This was also apparently a well-known fact to the, um, housing challenged. I remember one time when a coworker, Dan The Biscuit Man, (well, really more of a boy but it doesn't have the same ring to it) was throwing the trash into the dumpster and was startled by a guy in the dumpster getting sandwiches who arose from the refuse covered in flour.
This one particular breakfast shift I was working with Dan, who was of course working the biscuit table. Dan was fun to work with but was pretty good at goofing off, too, and we briefly ran out of biscuits. Looking back on this I have to wonder what our shift supervisor was doing. Anyway, shortly before running out, Dan put the biscuit making into high gear and soon had the oven stuffed with pans of soon to be biscuits. However, when the breakfast menu was closed at 10:30 we still had biscuits baking.
Being the clever college student I seized on an opportunity. I did mostly as company policy required. But first, I needed a fresh trash bag from the stock room. I counted the trays of biscuits as I dumped them very unceremoniously into the bag. I reported the count to the manager, who surely rolled her eyes at the excessive loss, and then proceeded to take out the trash which was one of my normal duties. However, I did not head to the dumpster. I walked straight to my car with that bulging bag of biscuits and put it in my trunk. They were a bit smashed and mis-shaped from rough treatment but they were so much better than the Pillsbury biscuits from a can. Mom put the bulk of them in re-used Schwann's ice cream buckets and stored them in the deep freeze. [The ice cream was sadly not consumed by us as the Schwann's brand was a bit pricey for our family.] However, we did consume delicious, mostly fresh biscuits for months which were even better eaten in our kitchen with mom's home-made [probably strawberry] preserves.