My Work

I am a baker at a small locally owned bakery and cafe. The bakery has been at the same location for 24 years but has had 4 different owners, it slowly past from owner to owner and was in bad shape retaining most of the original equipment. I actually applied to the last owner but the place was such a mess I was glad they did not hire me, so when I had to do a management interview for school I thought to my self okay what place do I not mind making a complete fool of myself in front of, to write this paper. Well as luck had it when I called, the woman that answered did not understand that I wanted to interview her, so she started to interview me and then a funny sort of "oh you're hiring, I dropped off my application a few weeks ago", "I just bought the place and it was such a mess please drop another one off". This was such a silly conversation/ double interview that even though I was nervous about the call to start with we where laughing and talking frankly by the end, this all lead to me getting a 100% on the paper and eventually the job. After my boss bought the place the first thing she did was take out the trash, do a thorough cleaning, then hire me. So I feel closely tied to the new start and image. Our kitchen is maybe 20ft x 15ft in one of the oddest shapes possible including two large chunks in opposite corners that have been made into bathrooms,

Our kitchen

This leaves zero space so every nook and cranny is stuffed with the most essential things and when I say every nook and cranny, I mean EVERY nook and cranny, to the point the old stove top oven that no longer works is now a cabinet for our large baking pans.

Sex in the city esk storage.

Now with so little space it would seem impossible to get much done but rest assured that we make it work! This being our busiest time of the year with graduations, weddings, catering and the lunching crowd it really puts us all to the test. My boss the new owner is a workaholic that pulls all nighters of 15+ hours, I even baked 50 cakes in one shift and then the next week topped it by 10 making over 60 cakes in one night just so we could get through the week, and the rest of our small group work tirelessly to keep things fresh, beautiful, delicious and ready on time.

One catering order oh and this is just the pre-meal snacks for the guests while the wedding photos were being taken, all the girls standing in the background are with the other caterers for the dinner meal that would be eaten after the bride and groom arrived

The nice thing is my boss is very good to us, and is great at motivation even indulging our crazy schedules and getting me to push that extra bit by letting me do some cake work, when I'm done with all the rest of my work.

My most recent cake, a show cake for city hall's display of the venders at the famers market

Not only do I know what she is doing, I love it, it's a great way to keep me happy, get some of the extra cake work done so the pros have more time to do the big things, but it also helps me improve my skills so when the opportunity comes up I'll be ready to shift into being a cake decorator(my goal).

Though I love my job and have a great repore with my boss not all is hunky-dory, this is the food service industry and that means very high turnover, mostly due to the pay and hard work needed, many try to tuff it out only to find they can not handle the pace or the wages don't cover the needs of their families (witch can raise home issues), also seeing as we are a big employer of single moms and their life is hard enough to start with, the big machining plants with their harder work, stricter rules, longer hours but with pay that is almost twice ours, means no matter how much we love them it makes it hard to keep permanent coworkers. So it was not the biggest shock that over our hardest month of the year we lost 4 of our 8 employees, to get through we have hired two summer girls that are off to college when school starts, but for now we are keeping our heads above water but just barely, as some of our fun outreach events have really increased business. Since my boss bought the business last year we have started to do wedding shows, donating to nonprofits and my favorite/pet project the farmers market,

me working our stall at the famers market

Even though many of the events have me baking into the small hours of the night, there is always a creative treat at the end to keep me going,

Our stand at a wedding show, the big stained-glass cake in the back is one I did, the one in front is by our head cake decorator. I also made and iced 1000 mini cupcake for this show

I work most of these events because I love introducing our hard work to the community and seeing people plan the happiest moments in their lives, there is nothing like good old fashion face to face neighborly interaction, plus I love getting our name out there because about half of the people that stop at our stand have no idea that the bakery even exists, many people ask "are you new" or "oh you have a store" that is just one of the bad side affects of previous owners. We even have many people say "oh your under new management I'll have to try that again" or "I knew the old owner" in a you couldn't pay me to go to her place sort of way, it's really sad how bad the reputation had gotten but leave it to my boss to do a 180 in the 8 months she has had it.

All this time energy and effort makes coworkers like family, you're all getting through together building something bigger and changing the community, we all stand up for each other in the day to day drama of painful life events, and nothing will get you to know someone like a 100 degree kitchen with so little room your always bumping into each other, most of the times in inappropriate ways that lead either to a "Sorry I didn't mean to elbow you in the boob I was reaching for the spoons" or the inevitable inappropriate jokes that is the by product of too many hours on the job and too little sleep (anyone that has worked in a kitchen will know how bad/ silly this can get).

Not your grandmothers bakery, really you get pretty silly in the heat (It's a carrot).

So for now hard work, new bakery family members and dedication are the name of the game, and one day we will have a second location and a real name in the community.