As he glanced into the rooms, the owner barked, “There’s nothing in there! You don’t need to look in there!”

Maybe some people in some industries can get away with working while they’re half asleep, but that’s not a luxury a mashgiach kashrus can afford! A good mashgiach has to have sharp eyes and an alert mind, and he also needs to be able to follow his instincts.

We once arrived at a bread factory bright and early, ready for our mehadrin baguette run. The machinery was kashered, the ingredients were vetted, and we were ready to go. The owner was making us a little nervous, though. He kept telling us we need to work quickly because he had to produce another run after ours. We assured him that we would, and we reviewed the ingredients again to make sure that only mehadrin dough conditioners and other kosher products were going into this batch. Then we did hafrashas challah, and finally, it was time to start.

When baking bread, a Yid (usually the mashgiach) has to be the one to turn the ovens on, to ensure pas Yisrael, so the owner irritably called the mashgiach to turn the ovens on. The mashgiach made his way toward the ovens, and on the way, he passed the freezer rooms. As he glanced into the rooms, the owner barked, “There’s nothing in there! You don’t need to look in there!” The owner glared at him fiercely. I exchanged a look with my co-mashigach and I gave him a slight nod with my head. We gotta check that out. Our inner alarm bells were blaring.

Ignoring the owner, the mashgiach entered the freezer room… and discovered our entire run, baked, packaged, and ready for shipping, complete with the stickers labeled with our hashgachah.  The problem was that we hadn’t even started our run yet… we were just about to turn the ovens on — and we hadn’t done a previous run. Uh oh.