All Hands On Deck (Another Day at Element Bars)

Judging by the number of letters/emails I have received saying “your blog changed my life”, “I sent this to all my friends” and “move over Hemingway” I don’t think I have a very wide readership. All the emails I have received of this variety have been sent from my personal email account. So, although I have blogged about “All Hands on Deck” days at Element Bars before, I think I might need to again.

At start-up companies, “All Hands on Deck” days are days which everyone in the company needs to stop what they are doing in order to help in another area of the company. These are great days because it means that there is a high demand for our product. At Element Bars “All Hands on Deck” days require help in the bakery. Last week after a call from the Big-Boss-Man, I threw my hair net on (which is quite an accomplishment because I am in desperate need of a haircut) and I set off for the bakery.

Due to the large number of orders we had to fulfill there were a bunch of bars that needed wrapping. When I arrived at the bakery, the unwrapped bars were sitting at the base of the flow-wrapper. A flow-wrapper is a machine that runs bars on a conveyor belt, wraps them in plastic and then heat seals the bags so they are still fresh when customers receive them. Our particular flow-wrapper has a conveyor belt, wrapping spool, cutter, sealer and temper. Fortunately, we have two Flow Wrapper Whisperers at Element Bars-Jonathan and Raul. These two guys can take even the wildest of flow wrappers and calm them down to help wrap bars.

During the “All Hands on Deck” day last week, Jonathan was whispering to the machine, Chris was feeding bars and I had was having an epiphany—my freestyle rap name. Now, I have never freestyled because I worried I would be really fantastic. My fear was I would be freestyle rapping on my morning commute or while grocery shopping and a record producer or Rihanna would approach me and want to collaborate on a record. I would be enthusiastic about the prospects when the inevitable question would come up “so what is your stage name?” I wouldn’t have a name and the project would be shelved. But now, thanks to Element Bars and the demand for our product I can rap freely because I have a freestyle rap name, Flo Rapper.