Pronoun Trouble

We're getting new employees in the bakery! Which is great, because the most recent new employee has been with us for over a semester and is just... generally not working out. Some of it is her ADHD (which she is only recently able to get medicated), some of it is personality clash with our Pastry Chef, and some of it is probably just her. We haven't had student interns since Covid, and I feel like over the same amount of time as one of the interns, she's definitely not adapted as well as some of them. I'm pretty sure she would have done better if she'd have gone through the actual bakery program in the school, especially with at least a handful of peers she could lean on and learn from, instead of coming into the bakery green as a possible new Lead Cook (second in charge under the Pastry Chef) and surrendering responsibility from there.

I also lost a lot of respect for her about two weeks ago, when I gave her a strong hint about needing to finish up her current task so she could tag in on one I needed her help with, followed by her continuing to take her time and chat amiably with students during her then-current task. She later admitted to catching and ignoring the hint, rather than (as I had initially assumed) missing the hint entirely. So. Definitely still a bit of lingering bad feeling there, not gonna lie.

Anyway, she'll be leaving us, hopefully for greener pastures on her end, in early June, so it's very good that we're getting two other employees. One of whom has already started and seems quite promising! I'm looking forward to meeting the second one soon 😃

The past week especially has re-solidified for me that no, I really don't want to work much more than twenty hours a week. Or, at least, not in a job as labor-intensive as baking, and not with a half-hour commute each way.

I might still be able to swing up to twenty-five hours, provided I can have shorter work days, but with gas prices being as they are, well. I suppose I'll stick with three long-ish days a week for now.

(I worked an extra day the past two weeks, and on top of that, Thursday was something of a nightmare. I spent most of Friday asleep and a lot of today generally resting and recovering. Tomorrow it's back to work (and earlier than usual), but at least it'll be a normal length week!)

A fun discovery at work last week: Apparently, the Tom Sawyer gluten-free flour blend that we've been ordering to make our gluten-free, vegan streusel topping? Has gelatin in it. Making our "gluten-free, vegan" streusel only one of those things.

(Well, technically not even one; we make all of our goods on the same site, and that includes glutenous breads. If there's a single tool in our kitchen that hasn't touched wheat, it probably hasn't been there for more than a week. But we can damn well make things as gluten-minimal as humanly possible in that situation, while being sure to warn any of our guests/customers of exactly what's going on.)

Anyway, I'm reasonably sure we'll be replacing that flour blend with something that's actually both gluten-free and vegan, and I only hope we didn't find out too late.

Cake decoration feedback!

Dear [Catering Sales Manager],

We were THRILLED with the perfect decor on the Birthday Cheesecake for our Veterinarian Dr. [Recipient].

The crowning touch, besides the paw print, was the post-surgical collar on the little dog on the cake.

It left no doubt that the cake was for her.

Thank you for your assistance. Please heartily thank your Culinary Team for making this happen.

Sincerely,
[Clients]

I am so happy I got to make that little doggy 🥰

We have this giant banquet at work on Friday and we have to make. So many pies. So many. It's better than Staycation, but I wasn't expecting to hate pies so much, especially since I didn't really hate cookies after all the Staycations and cookie jars I've been through so far. Is it because I like cookies more than pies? Hmm.

Accidentally mixed up some naan dough today with twice the water required; decided to double down on my mistake and double up the recipe.

I don't usually care for making naan at work, mostly because it involves even more rolling out of dough than you'd think. What with one thing and another (the one thing being the batch size and the other being tag teaming with one of my coworkers on the dirty dishes), this batch ended up sitting a lot longer than usual, which made for much easier rolling as a result. So the longer resting period I think I may keep going forward.

The batch size in general? Not so sure about. The first pieces of naan I'd rolled out had easily doubled in thickness, if not more than, by the time I finished rolling all of the dough and was ready to grill it. It was suuuuper over-proofed. I don't think it had a particularly negative effect on the overall product, but given the choice, I think I'd probably prefer to do two regular sized batches of naan rather than a single double sized batch in the future.

On the plus side, even if we do rule a few of the naan pieces to be unfit to serve, I made 113 total, so we should still have plenty; possibly even enough to get us through Thanksgiving (touch wood)...

...though the head chef for the restaurant has also been talking about shaking up the menu, which may mean naan will get eliminated from it in favor of some other flatbread. If this ends up being the case, I'm calling dibs on at least two dozen pieces! I feel fully entitled after the work I put in on them today. (Er, yesterday. Dratted past-midnight blogging...)

Phew! Work today was a roller coaster, and I don't mind saying so!

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Anyway, that was my day. I'm sincerely hoping that we can use the time until the restaurant opens back up to stock up a lot of things we generally need for the bakery, and also that I can use my day off tomorrow to finally get that job application properly filled out and sent. (I'm also hoping that Favorite Boss will let me leave a few hours early sometime this week, since I was apparently the only food worker who didn't get to do that today.) I don't care how many "We really appreciate how long you've stuck this out with us!" emails I get, I need a job where I can breathe. (Literally, actually, but that's a post for another time.)

Left work at a much, much more reasonable hour today than I have... the rest of the week, honestly. Only twenty minutes after I was scheduled off, and even that I might have skipped with a few different choices.

I managed to finish all of my assigned tasks today, as well as a task that had originally been on my list for tomorrow, and sweep and mop the majority of our workspace. (Why am I sweeping and mopping the bakery space? Because the cleaners who the hotel had originally hired all left the job, and the cleaners they contracted to do it showed up all of maybe twice, shortly after being contracted, and we in the bakery haven't seen any evidence of them since.) My other options included leaving maybe half an hour early, doing a few other menial tasks and whittling away the time until Leaving O'clock, or helping out in the dish room.

I honestly would have liked to help out in the dish room, but my decision came down to this: There were other people who were willing and able to wash dishes, but not who were willing and able to clean the bakery floor. And it needed cleaning badly. Probably for more than a week now, but we've been so slammed by things that we need to do, neither me nor my two baker coworkers have had the time or energy to do more than a quick sweeping job for ages. So today I took initiative and did the most thorough sweeping I could manage, and at least a decent mopping job (I hope). Mopping took a lot out of me (it's physical in a very different way from baking), but ultimately I think I'm glad I did it.

Anyway, other than that, I'm still recovering from the 11:20 shift yesterday, and it's highly likely that I'll turn the lights out early today. And also sleep through most of Saturday and Sunday, since those are my next days off. We'll see what tomorrow brings...

Boy howdy has it been a long day week month? Ish? Bleh.

Days at work were pretty long in the week-and-change leading up to AnimeIowa, so I was disappointed when I started up again after my "working vacation" and my days were really no shorter. It's been a grueling couple of weeks, with my favorite boss leaving soon and really just me and one coworker in the bakery most of the time. And I truly do like and appreciate this coworker most of the time, but she is... even less organized than I am? And hasn't found a method of organization that works for her yet? And also easily stressed out in a way that really stresses me out? So when she had to leave early today for a dentist's appointment, I ended up having a better work day than I usually do, even though I could have really used an extra pair of hands around the bakery for most of it.

I left "early" yesterday, in a way that mostly translates to "actually on time", because I had an oil change scheduled for this morning that I had to get up early for, which lengthened the day another few hours. Staying two hours late at work today didn't help much, even if it was a less stressful environment than it could have been (and also I got a lot of podcast listening done). I technically have tomorrow off, but I'm going in for a few hours anyway, mostly because we have fifty-eight six inch cakes that need finishing and boxing by Sunday afternoon and only half of them are even crumb coated yet (and I don't know if we even have enough frosting for all of them just now), but also because the aforementioned cake situation plus several large banquets in the past and upcoming weeks have badly depleted our time for backing up the essentials. Plus there was one day when I was instructed to make marble rye rolls when, judging by what's actually backed up in the freezer, I really should have been making hamburger buns.

Anyway, it's been. Something. At work. To the point where I'm once again considering the pros and cons of finding another job. I went into baking because it was something practical to do and straightforward to learn, and also has an element of visual creativity I can lean into, but I haven't really been able to take advantage of the "visual creativity" part for several years now, and the rest of the job is definitely getting to me. Especially the stuff that really shouldn't be part of our job. Like, we've got an actual dish washing room for the whole hotel? But the bakery staff still washes most of our own dishes, because otherwise we have to hunt them down in other kitchens on the regular (or, in the case with industry standard recycled sour cream containers, they get thrown out by one of the dish washers). And the cleaning crew the hotel hired to supposedly come in and wash our floors and maybe wipe off our appliances doesn't seem to have done any work in the bakery at all but for once or twice after they were hired.

So yeah. I'm tired and frustrated, but at least I'm going to sleep soon, and that will be something.

On the one hand, it's a nice, dark Saturday night right before July 4th in the United States; the distant rumbling I'm hearing is almost certainly fireworks rather than thunder.

On the other hand, I feel better for having gone out to my car and closed the windows I'd left cracked in anticipation of heat but not rain.


In other news, the AC is fixed again as of yesterday morning. I'm keeping water bottles in the freezer for a few more days at least, though, Just In Case.


In other other news, I'll be working extra hours the next week; one of my coworkers is taking her PTO before it expires, and has picked this week to do so. More power to her, and this'll give me some more spending money for AI, but uh. Still not terribly looking forward to the next week.