Pronoun Trouble

The area I live in has been under a heat advisory for the past three days; on top of that, the bakery didn't get below 65% humidity for the entire time I was there today, and I was not prepared. I didn't apply enough anti-chafing gel this morning to deal with that level of humidity, both personal and environmental! The end result was me basically waddling the last few hours of work to minimize thigh chafing, which was less effective than I'd like.

Things got somewhat better at home, where I didn't have to walk around nearly as much and where the humidity is much lower, but I didn't account for the sheer horror of sitting on a toilet seat. I have no idea why that specifically was so bad, except for how targeted it was for the exact area that had been chafing all day. Possibly also I forgot how much of a pain it was since I last had chafing this bad.

Anyway, I've had a nice shower and am airing things out. My thighs should be at least somewhat better after I sleep, though I can't say I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe I'll bring a change of pants to work...

The worst of Cookie Hell has passed. I still have work tomorrow, but after that it's three days off. I am looking forward to an afternoon nap, and just maybe a long soak in a tub full of hot water.

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 😃

In other news, we just got all new chef coats at work. While I'm reasonably jazzed about the zipper and the snaps that help keep sleeves rolled up, the switch from cotton to a poly-cotton blend (emphasis on poly) with air vents is Not Ideal, and I am entirely dismayed by the lack of front breast pocket. I used that to listen to my phone, darnit! I don't always want to be taking over the bluetooth speaker, and it's not like I can legally wear headphones, even if I was willing to risk missing crucial work interactions that way!

It put me out of sorts for several hours today, I'm not afraid to say. It also put me in mind of finding a way to wrangle my own aprons that I could include some sort of "top pocket" on. Surely there must be a way. And it'd definitely be cheaper for me than buying my own chef coats and bringing them from home, though that is certainly another option. Gotta buy new clogs first, though; my current pair has practically worn through the bottom layer of the soles.

How I know I have time management issues: I decided to make a double batch of scotcharoos today between making a double batch of beer bread and a double batch of chocolate-and-peanut-butter-chip scones.

How I know I've learned from past time management mistakes: I at least started trying to melt the butterscotch mini-chips when the beer bread dough was in its first proofing stage, rather than after I had measured out all of the other scotcharoo ingredients. It didn't save me from getting out of work late, but it was a better result than it might have been.


Note to self: Find out of there's faster melting butterscotch chips on the market; two hours on a double boiler may not have been long enough for these fuckers, but it was more than long enough for me!

The (newly promoted) Executive Chef at work wants to talk about the size of our marble rye rolls again.

I am very tired of hearing, every single time we/I make a thing, that there is something wrong with it. Last time it was biscuits; this time it's the marble rye. And honestly, I only say "we" because of the time that I suspect kicked off the marble rye thing, which is the first time in ages I didn't shape it personally and gave the wrong advice to my coworker as to what size to roll them, following which we had complaints about the size of the rolls.

Last weekend, I talked to my coworker, and we pulled all the marble rye rolls we had in stock for the Big Cooking Boss to look over, and approve or disapprove of their use. He approved the most recent batch of rolls, and declared the batch before it usable. I thanked him for his time, and told him we'd be using the just-barely-too-small batch up before getting to the good batch, because it was older and he'd approved them for use.

Today I was informed that he wants to observe and possibly demonstrate rolling technique tomorrow when I set down to shaping the marble rye rolls.

...

God dammit, I thought we were done with this shit! Is this a communication problem? Because I'm trying to ask you what you expect from these rolls, and I thought you said they were good, but now it seems like you don't think so after all? Do you just want us to go to the way they were before I gave my coworker bad advice? Because we can do that! You just have to fucking say so!


In other news, I talked to a friend on Tuesday about jobs available at his company. He told me there were 95 open positions, and helped me narrow the list down to a handful I would be qualified for. I've since narrowed the handful down farther to jobs I think I would be interested in/feel capable of, and hope to start the actual applying process in the next couple of days. I've let at least a few of my compatriots at the hotel know of my intentions, and Teacher Coworker commented that she's not terribly surprised; the food industry is very rough on people.* I made it around eight years, which I feel is a pretty respectable amount of time, but I don't think I can keep it up. I'll be there with bells on for any efforts to improve the food industry, though.

* Yes, my first thought was the "chews them up and spits them out" idiom, I'm sure you're not surprised.

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.

I am more-or-less officially back to work at the bakery! I asked for, and was granted, shifts starting at noon unless requested/bargained for otherwise, with Saturdays being the exception (partly because AI meetings, partly because PoGO; I am weak to Community Days and boosted shinies). I'm having a mostly good time being back, aside from the fact that the night inevitable "staying past the time I was scheduled to leave" thing has already begun. I truly, deeply, and sincerely wish this was not A Thing in the hospitality industry.

Other improvements include our most recent pastry chef having left; of the three pastry chefs I've worked for at the hotel so far, she was the best, but uh. That's a low bar to clear. Pretty sure her middle name is "Karen", if that gives you any idea. The person who I'm fairly certain is our new Lead Cook (position just below Pastry Chef in the hierarchy, with pastry chef at the top) is on the spectrum as well, which should make communicating a lot easier for me.

Other losses include the majority of my coworkers in the bakery; we're down to three people besides me, one of whom can only work on Tuesdays, and those sparingly. Our previous Lead Cook was awesome, ended up realizing she was too awesome for the job, and left (while encouraging us to leave as well). Teacher Coworker is still working in the building, but only as a teacher and not at all with hotel stuff. Our newest employee also left, possibly because things... really aren't as good as they could be at the hotel, TBH. So it's down to us: The few, the bold, the stubborn, the all too easily exploitable.

That said, both of the coworkers I see on the regular have proven open to the idea of unionizing, so fingers crossed that we can work together and change something for the better. I mostly like my job, but I'm also partly afraid of trying to find somewhere else to work (the "information" that Karen!Pastry Chef drilled into me is that everywhere in the food industry is like this, which is all too plausible, and I'm doubtful of my other skills).

Oh, well. At least, for the foreseeable future, I won't have to depend on unemployment...

Holy shit, I just now realized:

Trump reminds me of my first boss at the hotel bakery!

She was terrible with money, treated the employees badly, hated anyone who she realized was better than her, especially hated anyone who was better at her in something she wanted to be good at, got out of as much work as possible (especially in the bakery), what she did do she did badly, insisted everything be done exactly her way unless it was one of the few things she didn't care someone else was better than her at (Teacher Coworker with brioche, me with fondant figures), made everything about her, couldn't take criticism, extremely set in her ways, and with a background that didn't particularly suit the career she had been hired for. Also that one... I wanna say Mother's Day Weekend? Where I had two RSD breakdowns from her bad instructions and she pulled me into the hallway for a "talk" that was entirely berating me and telling me not to yell at her any time I so much as opened my mouth to speak, and then sent me home for the rest of the day, even though there was still a shit-ton of work left to do and I wanted to help out, just not on the thing she wanted to assign me.

I mean, they're clearly not exactly the same? First Pastry Boss had a lot less money and a lot less power in general, and I'm sure the fact that she was a cis woman played a certain amount in the ways she did and didn't treat us, but wow. The parallels are horrifying. I hate to think what would have happened to the hotel if she'd been in charge of it for as much as four years, instead of relegated to a department with a much more limited scope and fired after ...what, one year? Two?

Anyway, good riddance to her, and may I shortly say the same of Trump (please oh please).