Hostess Brands Inc., maker of Twinkies® and Wonder Bread® has filed for bankruptcy protection. For the second time in three years, it has failed to reach an agreement with workers on pension, health and other benefits. Among the ‘other’ benefits workers had hoped to get was ‘An unlimited supply’ of their beloved snack food after retirement.
Contractually, ‘Unlimited supply’ had been defined by the company as ‘the weight of the retiree plus 150 calories divided by 5 grams of fat and added to their years of service’. The workers union wanted an ‘Unlimited supply’ which they defined as ‘An unlimited supply’.
A union rep said “get rid of the company gym and all those fitness trainers that we’ve never used and that should save them about $3 million”. We’ll forego any additional health benefits if they add ‘Ho Ho’s® and/or Ring Dings® to the plan and deal with the results down the road. He playfully added, “A road we’ll probably never jog on”.
The company, which has about $860 million of debt said it needs to sell 28 Twinkies® to each American every week to break even, and said that goal is “As reachable as the nearest shelf of Twinkies at your local convenience store”. With the actual shelf life of about 25 days, aficionados would still have the time to strip their local convenience stores of the product and find a suitable replacement.
Hostess bakeries around the country produce about half a billion Twinkies® a year or enough to go around the combined waists of the contestants at the beginning of the new season of the show ‘The Biggest Loser’.
“If we made them out of whole grains, maybe we wouldn’t be in such dire straits”, said a company spokesperson, “but then again, how many college students organic food sustainability collectives are there?
In related news, 4Hostess employees were fired after they were found to have utilized the Twinkie assembly line after hours to ‘shoot cream filling’ down the throats of new workers in a ritual hazing ceremony. The new workers, dazed and unable to coherently communicate could only offer a ‘thumbs up’ as they went through what seemed to the emergency medical technicians as extreme sugar shock or ‘Whatever the hell they pump into those little cakes’.
Comments