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soc_puppetExtra long day at work today. Mostly compared to "how long my days have been lately" than "average day length overall", but that doesn't mean it felt any shorter!
Today was a Solo Sunday, which I usually like pretty well; I can listen to pretty much whatever I want for most of the day when I'm on my own, so I usually get a lot of listening done. Which, granted, I did do today! In fact, I got through more of my podcast playlist than I was expecting. Mostly because of unexpected complications.
The first thing I saw when getting into the bakery today was a whooooole bunch of cake stands waiting in the dish washing area, either barely cleaned or not cleaned at all. The second thing was the cart of clean dishes from the dish room, left in an inconvenient place. I resolved to take care of them after I checked how well stocked the restaurant was, since that was slightly more time sensitive.
Moments later, when I'm walking into the back end of the restaurant with my checking-things clipboard in hand, the front end manager stops me. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! We're completely out of brunch pastries!" So I did a 180°, went right back to the bakery, and got to finding what was available for brunch pastries. Which was... not what I would have liked.
See, usually we try to have three or four different flavors of pastries to serve for brunch, with a preference for coffeecake and mini muffins, since those are cheaper. Donut holes do well in a pinch, especially to fill things out a bit, but the ones we order are a bit on the small side. Unfortunately, there were zero mini muffins available upstairs, I didn't have time to get any from downstairs, and while we did have coffeecake (two flavors, even!), none of it was cut. I ended up using all of the donut holes (half cinnamon-sugar, half powdered sugar) and sending them out ASAP while I cut the coffeecake into usable pieces.
Now, this wasn't the first time I'd been left high and dry in the brunch pastry department; the previous time, the mini muffins had been sent into storage by mistake, and this time around I'm assuming that Saturday was ludicrously busy and we hadn't had enough room to keep them upstairs. This is just an assumption, since I was off Saturday, but it has some pretty decent evidence; the dish cart blocking the entry to the bakery proper, the unwashed and unsorted cake trays, and one of my coworkers complaining about working a Saturday when she usually doesn't and had other commitments. The last time the mini muffins were missing, I stressed the hell out about it; after clarifying with my boss, I was much less stressed over the lack of different pastry options this time around, but at least equally stressed over timing.
Anyway, the brunch pastries got cleared up pretty well, and I didn't need to restock much in the restaurant, leaving me free to tackle the rest of the to-do list. Which went pretty well! I got everything I needed to do done by 3pm or so, leaving me at least two hours before I could clock out, so I started examining the "If there's time, maybe" to-do list for something I could fit in.
I finished two trays of brownies and cleaned just about all of my dishes by 4pm, with still more time left in my day. The remaining options were an extra large batch of blueberry muffins, an extra large batch of double chocolate muffins, a twenty pound batch of peach pie filling, or polishing glasses. After my thumb adventures in January, I was reluctant to polish glasses with no immediate backup in the room, so I nixed that option. As for the peach filling, well, sometimes we keep the fruit we use all one size, and sometimes we cut it down smaller, and I wasn't interested in stressing out over which one it needed to be—or in texting someone to ask, and then stressing out anyway while I waited for the answer. Which left the muffins.
I settled on the blueberry muffins, since those tend to be extremely popular, and I figured it'd be better to have those made sooner than the double chocolate ones. One of the first things I did was check that we had blueberries upstairs, which we did! It looked like it was probably enough, so I took it on faith that it was. This turned out to be a mistake.
Only after I had already measured out and combined all of the wet ingredients, with most of the dry ingredients on standby, did I get around to actually weighing out the blueberries. There was ultimately only about two-thirds of the amount I needed for the recipe, and all of the wet ingredients already sloshing around together in the mixing bowl.
It was a little bit past four in the afternoon. I didn't want to throw out any of the ingredients, but pouring the wet ingredients into a pitcher to store in the walk-in cooler overnight didn't sit well with me. It was then that I hit upon my solution! The blueberry muffin and double chocolate muffin recipes were virtually identical; I could just measure out the dry ingredients for the double chocolate muffins and use the wet ingredients I'd already measured out! Sure, it was pretty late in the day, and this would take a while, but it was the best option, right? ...Right?
Two and a half hours, eight dozen mini muffins, and eighty regular sized muffins later, I stood by my opinion that it was the best option, but that didn't mean I was happy about it. If I had gone with the chocolate muffins to start with, or if there had been enough blueberries, I probably still would have left late, though somewhat less late; the peach filling or glass polishing would have been a better fit for my time.
I treated myself to some takeout Chinese food on my way home, because I didn't feel like cooking or like eating a sandwich. It probably cost almost exactly the amount of money I made by staying late at work. I think it worked out okay.
Today was a Solo Sunday, which I usually like pretty well; I can listen to pretty much whatever I want for most of the day when I'm on my own, so I usually get a lot of listening done. Which, granted, I did do today! In fact, I got through more of my podcast playlist than I was expecting. Mostly because of unexpected complications.
The first thing I saw when getting into the bakery today was a whooooole bunch of cake stands waiting in the dish washing area, either barely cleaned or not cleaned at all. The second thing was the cart of clean dishes from the dish room, left in an inconvenient place. I resolved to take care of them after I checked how well stocked the restaurant was, since that was slightly more time sensitive.
Moments later, when I'm walking into the back end of the restaurant with my checking-things clipboard in hand, the front end manager stops me. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! We're completely out of brunch pastries!" So I did a 180°, went right back to the bakery, and got to finding what was available for brunch pastries. Which was... not what I would have liked.
See, usually we try to have three or four different flavors of pastries to serve for brunch, with a preference for coffeecake and mini muffins, since those are cheaper. Donut holes do well in a pinch, especially to fill things out a bit, but the ones we order are a bit on the small side. Unfortunately, there were zero mini muffins available upstairs, I didn't have time to get any from downstairs, and while we did have coffeecake (two flavors, even!), none of it was cut. I ended up using all of the donut holes (half cinnamon-sugar, half powdered sugar) and sending them out ASAP while I cut the coffeecake into usable pieces.
Now, this wasn't the first time I'd been left high and dry in the brunch pastry department; the previous time, the mini muffins had been sent into storage by mistake, and this time around I'm assuming that Saturday was ludicrously busy and we hadn't had enough room to keep them upstairs. This is just an assumption, since I was off Saturday, but it has some pretty decent evidence; the dish cart blocking the entry to the bakery proper, the unwashed and unsorted cake trays, and one of my coworkers complaining about working a Saturday when she usually doesn't and had other commitments. The last time the mini muffins were missing, I stressed the hell out about it; after clarifying with my boss, I was much less stressed over the lack of different pastry options this time around, but at least equally stressed over timing.
Anyway, the brunch pastries got cleared up pretty well, and I didn't need to restock much in the restaurant, leaving me free to tackle the rest of the to-do list. Which went pretty well! I got everything I needed to do done by 3pm or so, leaving me at least two hours before I could clock out, so I started examining the "If there's time, maybe" to-do list for something I could fit in.
I finished two trays of brownies and cleaned just about all of my dishes by 4pm, with still more time left in my day. The remaining options were an extra large batch of blueberry muffins, an extra large batch of double chocolate muffins, a twenty pound batch of peach pie filling, or polishing glasses. After my thumb adventures in January, I was reluctant to polish glasses with no immediate backup in the room, so I nixed that option. As for the peach filling, well, sometimes we keep the fruit we use all one size, and sometimes we cut it down smaller, and I wasn't interested in stressing out over which one it needed to be—or in texting someone to ask, and then stressing out anyway while I waited for the answer. Which left the muffins.
I settled on the blueberry muffins, since those tend to be extremely popular, and I figured it'd be better to have those made sooner than the double chocolate ones. One of the first things I did was check that we had blueberries upstairs, which we did! It looked like it was probably enough, so I took it on faith that it was. This turned out to be a mistake.
Only after I had already measured out and combined all of the wet ingredients, with most of the dry ingredients on standby, did I get around to actually weighing out the blueberries. There was ultimately only about two-thirds of the amount I needed for the recipe, and all of the wet ingredients already sloshing around together in the mixing bowl.
It was a little bit past four in the afternoon. I didn't want to throw out any of the ingredients, but pouring the wet ingredients into a pitcher to store in the walk-in cooler overnight didn't sit well with me. It was then that I hit upon my solution! The blueberry muffin and double chocolate muffin recipes were virtually identical; I could just measure out the dry ingredients for the double chocolate muffins and use the wet ingredients I'd already measured out! Sure, it was pretty late in the day, and this would take a while, but it was the best option, right? ...Right?
Two and a half hours, eight dozen mini muffins, and eighty regular sized muffins later, I stood by my opinion that it was the best option, but that didn't mean I was happy about it. If I had gone with the chocolate muffins to start with, or if there had been enough blueberries, I probably still would have left late, though somewhat less late; the peach filling or glass polishing would have been a better fit for my time.
I treated myself to some takeout Chinese food on my way home, because I didn't feel like cooking or like eating a sandwich. It probably cost almost exactly the amount of money I made by staying late at work. I think it worked out okay.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-17 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-18 05:20 am (UTC)