Gonna miss the bakery.

My last batch of rainbow cake I made at work 2 days ago. There's actually a bit of blue in the top purple batter, that's because I use the same bowl to color all the batter, cleaning it only once after doing Yellow, Orange and Red. When I first started, I always cleaned after every color, that was obviously not time efficient, so I just fuck all and it didn't turn out so bad as evident from the picture, so far no customer has complained about a weird colored layer.



Have to admit, after today's interview at that piece of shit company, it has suddenly dawn on me that I'm really going to miss working at the bakery. Despite the low pay and the hectic workload, both of which I'm not gonna miss, being able to work in an environment where everyone is actually nice is really hard to find and that's the thing I'm gonna miss the most about working there. I actually put the uniform that was in my bag against my nose to take a whiff one last time, to remind me of how I smell like every time I left the bakery after work... not a bad smell.



One other perk of working there was being able to report to work anytime I want, or to be more specific, arriving 30 minutes late and no one actually caring, but I do only go back home when I have completed my work for the day, so I'm not that horrible of a worker. The head chef did tell me in the first month that I could plan my schedule as I liked, as long as I finished my work on time, that was pretty awesome.




Good thing though is now that I have worked at the bakery and memorized a majority of the recipe by heart, whenever I am feeling peckish for a good slice of cake, I no longer have to look for recipes online.

Malt Cupcake with Cookies and Cream Buttercream

Speaking of which, I made this cookies and cream cupcake a few days back using a recipe I found online. Ended up with a stomachache.

Waste of my fucking time.

Just came back from my interview at the design firm this morning and I thought it would be great to write down my experience while the feelings about it are still raw.





Woke up this morning feeling relatively positive about the interview I was gonna have today, since it was a firm the institute found for me, I thought the chances of me getting hired would be pretty high, even the lady from the institute whom I spoke to a few days ago was quite confident about me getting the job when I asked her about office location.



Even though the office was located all the way at Paya Lebar, I was hoping that they would have other offices scattered around Singapore, since the address written on their website stated a different location, and even referred to that location as it's Headquarters, I thought that the place I was going to be interviewed at was probably the HR and Admin office or something, the place where all the non-design related stuff are done and they would have their design offices at various parts of Singapore with the Headquarter being the office where the big boss works or something.




So after a 2 hour ride to the place, I finally reached the office, and it was in some dingy looking 5 storey building in the middle of Joo Chiat Road that looks a lot smaller than I thought, l didn't even know there were 5 storeys until I actually went into the lift and saw the level 5 button, hell, I didn't even know the building had more than 3 storeys when I first looked it up on Google Maps. In my head, I just pictured all the employees bending over as they are walking about the tiny office.




Headed straight to level 4 and was ushered into the office, which looked like how any office would look, boring. And I asked for this lady called Sophia, because that was the person I was asked to look for during the interview... so I waited for a while while the employee went to look who I thought would be the Sophia person... but No~, instead of getting Sophia, I get this other person who was obviously not a Sophia, unless Sophia was a transgender going through a transition period.




For the purpose of this blog post I shall just call this dude Steven. He never bothered to tell me his name.



So Steven walks up to me and shakes my hand, asking me for my name and ushered me into what I thought was his office. And from the moment I saw Steven, I knew he was one of those people who has what most would call a "resting bitch face".... or maybe he really was being a bitch because for the entire interview, he hardly smiled, he had this disinterested look in his face anytime I was speaking and even when he was speaking, he sounded like he was about to fall asleep.




The first question he ask me when were both seated down at the interview table.



Steven : "What's your name again?" I just fucking told you like less than a minute ago.


Me : "It's Timothy"


 Steven "Okay, so how do you spell that?" Normal question I get since most people always spell my name with an extra N for some reason,  TimoNthy, which isn't right, like how are you pronouncing my name in your head with that extra N ? I don't get it.


Me : "T I M O..."


*proceeds to write on paper in his atrocious handwriting*


T I N....



Me : "Ummm, it's a M not an N"

*scribbles off N and continues with butchering the spelling of my name*

T I N M O T H I...


Me : "It's H Y not H I"


*scribbles off the letter I and butchers my name even more*


T I N M O T H I H Y


That was how he spelled my name, at that end I didn't really bother correcting him anymore because it looked like it wasn't going to be of much help, people usually add an extra "N" in my name and that's as far as the spelling error goes, but this Steven guy manages to mangle it up, because as if having an atrocious handwriting isn't bad enough, he decides to decorate it further with the awful ass scribbling of his. My name on the form that he wrote for me didn't even look like a word anymore, more like the ground where a race of blue aliens were massacred.



At that point in time, I didn't really think too much about his lack of spelling skills or his lack of the basic understanding of phonics because the interview was all about the job, not my name.



So he proceeds to ask me about what I was doing before this and I told him I was working as a baker professionally after I left the army and he decides to ask me.....



Steven : "How's your baking?"



I didn't really see the relevance in that question because the only reason I could think as to why someone would ask that question would be if they were actually genuinely interested in the person's baking or if you were hiring me as a baker, Steven was obviously not interested at all and I am being interviewed for an interior designer position, so I just sat there wondering what I can say to make it short because if you ask me about baking... you are gonna have to be a lot more specific with your questions.



Like what do I bake or how often do I bake ? My skills in baking? Whether I am fast or not or whether or not I tend to over bake or under bake my cakes? PLEASE BE MORE FUCKING SPECIFIC !




So after an awkward few second of realizing that this Steven guy isn't going to continue the interview until I answered the question, I just went..



"Ummm...good I guess? It's edible. Well my boss said my baking speed was great but....." and I just mumbled the rest of my sentence until Steven interjects with another question because I know he wasn't going to stay interested in the topic, or as "interested" as he already wasn't, if I went any longer he would probably just take out a pillow, wrap himself in a blanket, suck his thumb and fall asleep.





He looks down at his paper, looks up again and ask me..



Steven : "What have you been doing after you graduated from Poly? "


Me : " Well I was in the army for 2 years and after which, I decided to explore other career options."


Steven : "So why did you decide to come back to to Interior Design ?


Me : "Well to be honest, it was because the pay wasn't good for the long term"


Steven : "Okay~ But you were the one who made the decision to go into baking right ?"



YES STEVEN I AM THE ONE WHO MADE THE DECISION TO GO INTO BAKING PROFESSIONALLY, BUT THE PAY WASN'T GOOD SO NOW I AM BACK!  SO CAN WE CONTINUE THE INTERVIEW WITH YOU NOT SOUNDING LIKE A CONDESCENDING ASSHOLE.




I had to further emphasize how low the pay was and how it wasn't a good long term career for me. He then decides to ask me to rank my software skills from 1 to 10, so I had to remind him that I hadn't been using this software for at least 3 years.



Steven : " Why?"

OMG STEVEN THAT'S BECAUSE I WENT TO THE FUCKING ARMY FOR 2 YEARS AND WAS IN THE F&B INDUSTRY FOR ONE YEAR. What the fuck am I suppose to do with those software? Bake a cake with it? Stop asking me so many stupid fucking questions!


It's like a parent telling their kid not to touch any apples because they are infested with bugs and then the kid goes... "Oh but can I eat them?"  I have been a baker for the past half a year, I have no use for the software, connect the fucking dots dude.



After rating my software skills, I felt like I have to give a disclaimer to Steven...



Me : "The reason why I am not so good at the software is because as you know I haven't been using them for a while now, my skills are a bit rusty, and I am hoping that by entering the design institute, it will help me with getting used to the software again."


...and instead of nodding his head and understanding my reasons for the mediocre ratings I gave myself, he goes...



Steven "Yeah, so how does the institute work? I'm not too sure about it?"


Are you fucking kidding me?  You are the one who requested my resume from the design institute and you don't know how they work?



Me : "Well I called the institute up a few days ago and they told me that we will have about 2 days worth of lessons every week blah blah blah" Information you should know when you decided to find employees through the institute's candidate's database.



Steven : "So how much are you expecting in terms of salary then."


Me : "For starting pay I am looking somewhere around $1800 ?" My original asking price I had written in the resume was $2000, so I have already reduced the asking salary by quite a bit.



Steven : " $1800? And you will only be working for us 3 days a week" *looks up to me with a "are you fucking kidding me" face*


In my mind, I was thinking $1800 does sound quite high if I were to working only 3 days a week, so I was waiting for him to set a quote for me and just looked back at him, waiting for him to recover from his disbelief, but he just kept looking at me waiting for me to reply back.



It's very obvious he thinks my pay is high, but what was he expecting the scenario to play out be like...


Me "Oh yeah, okay why not $1700, cheap cheap, no where else can get this price"

Steven : " $1500 my offer!"

Me : "$1650! Very low already, no where else can find so cheap"

Steven : "$1600 Final Offer!"

Me : "Okay. Set! $1600 it is."



This isn't a fucking night market, and even if it was, if you think my asking pay is too high, then set a quote so we can discuss further, what the fuck am I suppose to do if you just keep staring at me, have a discussion with myself about how low of a pay I can settle for?



I just smiled at him and when he realized that I wasn't going to give any other response other than my stupid smile, he looked down at the paper, looked up at me and said...



"We will have to discuss this with the management..."





Yeah, discuss all you want because I am no longer interested in working for your fucking company. I had initially thought that Steven was the boss because when he ushered me into the interview room, I thought it was his own office, but after seeing how unprepared he was for the interview and how "knowledgeable' he was with the institute, I have come to the conclusion that he is just a foreigner hired by the boss to do renderings, he can't even spell my name without butchering it, and it's not just my name he can't spell, he even spelled the bakery I worked at wrongly.



So after that he gets up from his seat and sends me out, normally at the end of the interview, it's always the interviewee's time to ask question, he doesn't even bother with that... there wasn't any...


"So before we end this, do you have any questions regarding our company?"


None of that, just gets up, shakes my hand and shows me the way out. All that happened within a 5 minutes time span. The interview was suppose to start at 10.30 am.... I remember looking at the time as I was entering the building, it was around 10.21 am. When I came out of the interview room and was heading to the ground level of the building, it was just nice 10.30 am. The whole interviewed ended on the time it was suppose to start.



I traveled 2 hours just to get interviewed by the boss's lackey who doesn't know shit, doesn't even bother to introduce the company to me at all in the beginning, because most of the other firms I have went to get interviewed at usually, after asking me to introduce myself and present my portfolio, would in turn show me their portfolio and talk about their company and their working style, this guy just fucks all, brought his cheat sheet interview paper into the interview room and that was it.




Fuck You. I did not travel 2 fucking hours from Bukit Timah to Paya Lebar so I could be a practice interview for one of your resting bitch face employee. Oh and I also asked about the different address location on their website right before the interview ended because I thought it was their main headquarters, I was wrong, they aren't that big of a company, they were just too fucking lazy to update the address on their website, just like how the boss was too lazy to interview me and instead sends her employee who's too lazy to do any preparation for the interview he has carried out today.




It was a pure waste of time. Left a really really bad first impression, in fact they weren't even the one who emailed me about the interview, it was the institute who acted as the middleman, so prior to today's interview, I have never spoken to or exchanged email with any of the employees there. They have no Facebook page so I couldn't get any more information from them apart from their shitty website which they obviously never bother to update.



If you are planning to hire new employees through your website's career page, at least update your company's fucking address so people can actually make a proper and informed decisions about whether or not the company is right for them location wise.




Their old location was at City Hall and their new undisclosed location is at Joo Chiat road, that's how far the new location is to the old one.




All I can say to the company is....

That's F U C K  Y O U  you illiterate twat and your shitty ass design company. 

Jobless again.

Last day of work today, was quite bittersweet. Sous Chef had the kitchen crew write a small farewell card for me, apart from the Sous Chef, I don't really speak to any of the other people, so the messages of the card felt a bit forced, but I do appreciate the kind gesture.




Not looking forward to tomorrow's interview at all. Bloody location, I need to be driving a car to be able to work so far, come'on man, why you gotta get me a company that's located at the other end of Singapore. So infuriating, my whole mood got ruined at work today when it finally dawned on me that after today, the next place I will be working at will very possibly be located all the way at Joo Chiat Road.





I really don't enjoy long bus rides home. It's not a good feeling when the motion sickness kicks in. So I'm not really going to be expecting much from tomorrow's interview, unless the company has another office that's located near my house, otherwise I'm gonna be job hunting again.




Really hate the feeling of being jobless.

Design again.... Soon

Tomorrow will mark the last day of my work at the bakery and the following day would be my interview at the design firm.



The design institute actually got back to me last week, informing me that I have been shortlisted by 2 companies who are willing to pay for the fees of the course I will be attending, both companies I have never heard before, so initially when I was told about the news, I was very happy about it because working in the bakery at this point is really mentally exhausting for me.



I had actually officially quit my job at the bakery about 2 weeks ago, and at that point I was already fuck all about baking professionally, the past 5 months or so were great, I got to learn a lot of things from the sous chef and head chef and had great colleagues, but work started to get repetitive and it felt like I was just zoning out most of the time, mindlessly doing the recipes I have done probably hundreds of time, there was no creative outlet for me whatsoever because I was the baker, my job was just to bake the cakes and that's it... all the designing of the cakes were done by the decorators.




I have a really short attention span, so I really need to be doing something different everyday, that's why I can never play an MMO and hit max level because grinding starts to get really boring after the 7000th mob, the only MMO that I was able to hit max level was Guild Wars 2 because that was a really good story driven game that doesn't require hours upon hours of mindless grinding to level up, and that's the same with the work at the bakery, it was just a mindless grind everyday and even though I say I have great colleagues, we don't really speak at all when we are working, so it's helluva boring at work. But I needed to have some income, that's why I helped out at the bakery part time, plus they were low on manpower and I felt bad about leaving them in the lurch.




So when I actually got a call from the institute, I was extremely happy. The lady actually told me there were 2 design companies that shortlisted me, and that she would email me their information, in the end I only received the information of one of the two company. Being in the state of happiness that I was in, I just agreed with the confirmation of the interview, which will be on this Wednesday.



Of course now I am starting to regret not asking the lady about the other company because the company that I am about to go for an interview this Wednesday is located all the way at Paya Lebar. That's at the other end of Singapore, the last time I had to travel to the other end of Singapore regularly was when I was enlisted in the army, but that wasn't so bad because I didn't have to come home everyday,  travelling from Changi to Bukit Timah once or twice a week isn't so bad, but travelling from almost Changi to Bukit Timah TWICE EVERYDAY is fucking insane.



I checked Google Maps to see the travel time, it states that it takes about an hour but you can't really take the bus travel time at face value because unlike the MRTs, buses have to deal with road traffics and peak hour rush, and the waiting time for the bus could range anywhere from 5 mins to 40 mins, whereas the longest it will take for an MRT to arrive is 6 minutes  which is why I can never understand why people would prefer to take the bus over the MRT, plus I don't get motion sickness in the train, so I can actually watch a movie as I am heading towards my station, can't wait for the train station to finally be completed at my area. So anyways, Wednesday, I will probably know how long the journey to the design company will really take.... and afterwards probably call the design institute and ask about the other company.




The design company I am to go for my interview this Wednesday sadly did not put their real address on their website, it was their headquarters and even though the travel time is about the same, or so it states on Google Maps, I think the travel time is actually slightly shorter. Now I am hoping that the company actually has many different offices around Singapore, and the place I am going to on Wednesday is only for the interview, hopefully when I do get into the company, they will assign me to their office in the west.



One can hope.... because I really don't want to take a fucking 2 hour trip back and forth everyday from work for a year at least. I have a bond to serve if I do get accepted into the company and the company does pay for my fee, a one year bond, so I really have to make a proper decision.

CAKE!

Despite having been baking almost everyday at the bakery, I do still enjoy baking at home, the equipment I have at my disposal are definitely worse, the conditions are pretty much always against me and the space is borderline claustrophobic compared to the bakery.

But there's a difference between baking at home and baking at the bakery, and that is that the former actually allows me to reap the seeds I have sowed, the whole reason why I bake in the first place is because I love eating cake, fucking love cake, speaking of which, I went to PasarBella last Saturday, finally, after being opened for so long, and I came across this little shop tucked away at the corner selling all these really rustic looking cakes, my favorite kind of cakes, cake that actually look like cake... not those pretentious looking ones that looks good but taste like crap. 

So I bought one because it looked way too delicious to be given a miss, the Russian lady at the counter didn't look very friendly though, she looked like she wanted me to piss off, it's like in her mind, she's thinking....

"Fuck off kid, it's only 12 pm, we still have 8 more hours before closing, I don't want to sell the last slice to you because I have had it baking another batch."

That's what I think when I see customers walking into the restaurant I was working at before after lunch hour and before dinner time, because you know they are going to want to order fucking desserts and I am in no mood to bake after having to deal with 2 hours of non-stop baking during the lunch crowd.

Anyways, I bought what I thought looked the most appetizing... 

It's HUGE, and it's $12. I don't even know the name because it's a Russian cake. It's the same as me trying to remember Chinese name, I am not going to be able to remember a person who only have a Chinese name, unless your name is Xiao Ming, I am probably only going to remember your face like 5 years down the road.

Prior to that, I actually went to buy Twelve Cupcakes, wanted to see how it would fare against the one I make at the bakery, it's been a while since I have eaten their cupcakes, needless to say, after getting that ginormous cake, getting 3 cupcakes suddenly felt like a waste of money. I just chucked the cupcakes in the fridge and proceeded to gobble the Russian cake... when I did get back to the cupcakes though, I was too impatient and just ate it when it was still hard, so I couldn't come to any conclusion as to which cupcake was better, Twelve Cupcakes or the one sold by my bakery, although I'm sure my bakery one will win hands down, I mean we have a real pastry chef with years of experience coming up with the recipes... That's all I am going to say.

Buttercream (or Whipped Cream I'm not really sure), Chocolate Cake, Caramel Sauce with Caramelised Walnuts, repeat 3 times. The last time I actually had a mouthgasm was when I ate the Red Velvet from Lady M. It was AWESOME! But got a bit sick of it after a while because it was so big, couldn't finish it all at one go, which has never happened to me before with sliced cake, but I had to store this away to consume later because that was how big it was and how jelat it got.

It really tasted like IKEA Daim Cake.... but supersized, in fact I think it's the same kind of cake, except instead of Daim candy, it's caramelized walnuts.... with the skin and everything, because I had a few mouthful of bitterness, I had initially thought, in my paranoid mind, that the mixer they were using was rusty and the metal from the beater blade they had used to make the cake batter was slowly chipping off and mixing itself with the cake batter. It wasn't though, it was the walnut skins, they didn't peel them I guess, or maybe it's really chipped off metal from the beater blades.

I actually did some research when I bought the cake and realize the shop used to sell them to $10... and after more research, realized it was originally priced at $8. What the fuck, I didn't know cakes also went through inflation. It was a good cake nonetheless, the only gripe I have, apart from the rising price tag, would be the their choice of chocolate curls, from the moment I bit into one, I knew it was lousy chocolate, my taste bud has grown since entering the F&B industry... even if it was only for a year. Your whole cake taste awesome, why cut cost and get some shitty chocolate curls to bring down the whole thing.

A few weeks back, I came across a bottle of cookie butter at Cocoa Tree at Raffles Place.

I've tried it once at the bakery when the supplier brought one sample bottle for us to try, different brand but same taste, and it was really good so I decided to get a bottle.

One small bottle cost $9. My sister bought it for me and in return, I had to help her bake some brownies, and baked brownies I did. I took the recipe from the bakery and added the cookie butter, also made a biscuit base.

It looked really good, but sadly, the cookie butter's taste wasn't as strong as regular peanut butter, so the whole thing lacked flavor and was just very dry tasting, eating it kinda makes your tongue feels dry because of the biscuit base and the cookie butter spread, it wasn't necessarily a bad combination, but it was just way below my expectations.

So I just smothered a shit load of cookie butter spread on the top and it did taste closer to my expectations , but that was a lot of cookie butter spread to achieve that taste, and for $9 a bottle, slapping that large amount on a small piece of brownie was just not worth it. Wanted to post the brownie pictures on Instagram, but for some reason, brownies just aren't as popular as cupcakes when it comes to receiving likes from other people, that's why the brownie pics look better than the Russian cake pictures.

Part Timer

So I went back to the Driving Center yesterday, decided it was time to continue on my quest to obtain a driving license, the main reason why I stopped in the first place was because of work.

I used to work 6 days a week at the bakery when I was a full timer there and I think that it's a ridiculous schedule because it sucks to have spend the entire week looking forward to that day off, and when that day actually comes, realize that you will have to report back to work the very next day. Who ever decided it was a good idea to implement a 6 day work week deserves a special spot in hell right next to the person who thought it would be a good idea to bake a cake that requires you to portion out 6 batter dyed with a different color, stack'em all up together when you have baked them, frost that shit up and call it a rainbow cake, I would like to shove my middle finger up that person's butt hole 6 times, each time dipping my finger in a different food coloring, see how you'd like pooping out a rainbow chocolate cake.

So now I have been converted to a part timer with a 4 day work week, the pay's still pretty shit but I need to earn some income to tide me over the next few weeks or month depending on how long it will take for the bloody design institute to get back to me regarding my application to join their internship program. 

I had decided about a month back to try and apply for this design internship program with this particular institute, hoping it would allow me to enter the design industry once again as a  rookie designer, because I have spend the past 3 years being away from Interior Design, the 3 week stint at that design firm doesn't count because it was just a waste of time, working in the F&B was not a waste of time because I needed to experience what it felt like working as a baker to know that it wasn't my calling, working in that firm though was just a pure waste of time, you know it's not a good company to work at when the boss starts asking you to lie about your work experience and your senior colleague start telling you it's alright to plagiarize other people's work.... zero design integrity and she dares to refer to herself as a designer, although last time I checked, she was no longer working at the company anymore. 

Good riddance to her, shouldn't have praised her when she brought me to see one of her works that she very likely copied from someone, probably made her arrogant and gave her the impression that she could lecture me about how I should live my life telling me I live a life with no direction, that I need my parents to plan my path for me. You stupid fucking cunt, I spend the last 2 years of my life in the army and when I came out it only took me a month to get the job, so yeah, sure, lecture me and teach me your ways, let me follow your lifestyle choices by partying every night for a few years because who needs a job when you can spend your parent's money partying at nightclubs, but when I finally do decide to get a job,let it to be too late to repair the relationship I have with my parents. I would like to stuff that rainbow chocolate cake up her ass and put a cork in it so she will finally become the very thing she was born to be, a big bag of shit. 

I digress...

Anyways, the institute's admin actually called me up about 3 weeks ago whilst I was at work, telling me I was eligible for the program and that she would send my resumes out to the companies, asking me when I could start, naturally I thought it would mean that I was set, so I told her I needed a one month notice, she tells me that she will include my availability date in my resume and send it out to the companies anyways.

About a week later I got a bit worried when no one got back to me, I have already told my boss I was leaving at that point, so I emailed the lady, she replied back telling me the companies were still in the selection process and it would take a while before I got a response but she would help me do a follow up if I wanted to, of course I asked her to help me do a follow up and felt a bit relieved that not all hope was lost yet. Fast forward to today, no reply from any companies yet, this feels like the time I went to apply for a job at Lady M, signed a contract with them, only to have them not get back to me at all afterwards, telling me a few weeks later that I was no longer needed. I left my job for this and they tell me they no longer need my services because they have sufficient man power.... ummm.... Fuck you very much.

Now I am worried that this will be a repeat of that experience, only difference is now I still have a part time job instead of being completely jobless.

And back to the subject of the driving lessons.

So I actually went for 2 back to back theory lessons yesterday, decided it would be a good idea to get the compulsory lessons over and done with... all 200 minutes of boring car stuff. I really have no interest in how a car works, as long as it can get me from point A to point B. 

When people start talking about cars, my mind just switches off, so the 200 minutes was a very mind numbing experience for me. In the middle though, I had a 10 to 20 minutes break, so I decided to spend that time getting my Provisional Driving License done, just had to fill up a form, do some eye test and pay $25, it being a weekday, I thought it will be a relatively quick process... I was wrong.

Whenever the lady at the counter weren't pressing the button to assist the next person, all I could think was how incompetent they were, because I was rushing for time, I only had 20 minutes to get this done, stop sharing discussing which one of you has the sickest looking corn of their feet and assist me now. I think the corn discussion was more interesting so I just gave up and went back to the classroom... they weren't really talking about corn but being in the tight time frame I was in, any conversation they were having that was delaying my license registration just automatically becomes unnecessary chit chat.  

I decided to go get it done after the class was over though, and the wait was longer because in the middle of waiting, a shit load of people suddenly came up and handed in some papers which I assume is their test results for their practical test because they have passed. Good for them but I have already been waiting for 20 minutes so I really wanted to get this over and done with... they were served first while everyone who was waiting was pushed back so that was not fun. They just passed their driving test, the joy that they have from passing  is still flowing through them, they wouldn't mind waiting.

So after getting my PDL done, I got home and tried to apply for practical lessons, only to get a message telling me I had to update my PDL expiry date at the counter. I had initially thought there was some error or the database will be updated later... No... apparently I had to update my expiry date at a separate counter after getting my PDL, the fucking counter lady didn't even bother to tell me anything... What the fuck counter woman, it's really not that hard to say...

"Please go to the counter downstairs to update your PDL expiry date."

... at the end, your kid isn't going to die because you said those 12 magic words.

So now I have to go back again to update my PDL expiry date because somebody decided to leave out that small detail as she was typing out my information into my PDL.

Not a happy baker anymore.

My drive to blog about my life lately has started to dwindle a little mainly because there's really nothing in my life to blog about that's really interesting.




Work life has started to take a turn for the worst, that urge to quit has finally reached it's boiling point, I have finally thrown in the towel and gave the boss my resignation letter, much to her dismay, and I honestly felt really bad quitting because she has been really nice to me every time she dropped by the bakery to see how her workers were doing.



I have given her the my resignation letter, only problem now is that she has yet to confirm with me about my employment status at the bakery, does my contract end 2 weeks after I send her the resignation letter or 2 weeks after she has confirmed with me about my resignation....the talk that she had supposedly wanted to have with me this Saturday never happened, I assumed it was going to be her attempt at persuading me to stay. She did drop by the bakery to grab a custom cake order but left without even checking up on how I was doing or have that supposed talk with me.



One of my colleague who had already send in her resignation letter told me the boss does that to her employees who are quitting, that she doesn't really bother to talk to them anymore after they have send in their letters, and initially I thought maybe she was just being a bit sensitive  about it because the boss has been nothing but nice during the few meetings I had with her, there's no way she would be that nice vibe I ger from her was just a facade, but I guess I was wrong because the last fuck she gave about me has flown away like how working for her in the bakery has taken away my zeal and passion for baking for a living.




The real reason why I had actually wanted to leave the job earlier than I had planned was because of the fellow baker who was quitting as well, if she left while I was still around, that would mean I would have to take over her workload, and as of right now, I already have a lot on my plate, adding more would only make me want to not give a shit about using the weighing machine properly and instead just eyeball all the ingredient measurements because fuck the extra 10 grams of baking soda, I don't have time for accuracy if I have to make a thousand more recipes that day.



Settle for that flat cupcake because I'm not getting paid enough for making your moist and rich red velvet cupcakes with smooth creamy cream cheese that I probably sneezed in by accident for that extra salty kick.




The reasons why I quit though are because...




1. The pay is pretty shit for the hours I put into the job. I work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week and I get paid $1400. It sucks to have to work 6 days a week because at the start of the week, I will always look forward to that one day I get to wake up because sleeping any longer would make me feel like a pig, but when that day arrives, the dread of having to go back to work the next day just ruins everything.... like now, knowing my alarm will ring at 5 am tomorrow morning and I will be snoozing it till 6 am.





2. Monotonous work, I go to work everyday baking the same things over and over and over again, I hardly do any creative work there, it's just this endless cycle of mixing the batter, pouring it into the baking trays, baking it, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. 4 months of this monotonous work,I feel like a machine sometimes, just mixing batter and plopping it into cupcake liners, and I have been doing this so many times I no longer have to refer to the recipe book anymore because the measurements are now seared into my mind.




I enjoy the process of making a cake, and that not only mean baking a cake, I would like to cream a cake as well, design it and make it look good, but that's not what I am doing in the bakery ... instead, I am baking the cakes so the decorators can do the fun stuff. So all I am seeing everyday aren't things like this...

but more like a hundreds of this....

Just dozens upon dozens of unfrosted cupcakes or wholes cake layers. This is not food porn, my eyes don't get an orgasm from looking at that, my nose probably enjoys the smell but after a while when you work there long enough, you kinda get desensitized to the smell, like when this dude on the bus sat next to me a few weeks back who looked like he smells and smells like he looks, after like 3 minutes of sitting next to him and being worried people might think the odour is coming from me, my nose got used to the "did not bother to wash up after getting out of bed" smell that was coming from him and it didn't really bother me much afterwards.... because he left... Thank god.

3. A assistant manager who doesn't really care how the kitchen works.


So at my workplace, we have 2 locations, one is the central kitchen where me and all the other underpaid workers work in, and then we have the actual store which is located in the town area where the service staff works. Bakers job scope are pretty straightforward, we bake the shit to sell at the actual store and come up with new recipes for the boss every month, or the senior baker does that because as I have pointed out, I only bake the same shit everyday.



The service side at the actual store on the other hand deals with the customers, so they will do the sales and promote our baked goods to the customers as well as doing the normal cashier duties. What they also do is take custom cake orders and this is the part that really pisses me off sometimes about the assistant manager's order taking, she doesn't really give a shit whether or not the workload the kitchen team has that week is "There are only 4 bakers working here" crazy or "OH MY GOD THERE ARE ONLY 4 BAKERS WORKING HERE FOR FUCK SAKE" insane , she just takes orders like guppies eat food, until it explodes, except the one who's exploding is not her but the kitchen team because we are the one who has the complete the fucking order.



I got so pissed when she took a custom cake order for a 10 inch square rainbow cake, the bakery only has one 10 inch square baking tray, I had to bake the fucking layers individually because of her. Of course I brought that up to the boss and she decided to stop with custom rainbow cake orders knowing how time consuming it is... but a few days later, Another service staff took a 10 inch round rainbow cake order and we only have one 10" round baking tray, and the only reason why that happened was because the assistant manager didn't relay the fucking message to her staff.




In fact, a few weeks ago, she took another custom rainbow cake order again, this time in a shape of a car. LIKE WHAT THE FUCK LADY? STAHP ! FUCK STAHP TAKING SUCH WEIRD ORDERS MONTHS AFTER WE HAVE AGREED TO STOP WITH THIS RAINBOW CAKE NONSESNE!. Even the manager herself was shock when she came back from her leave and saw the custom order and needless to say, we the bakers were also taken not please it, more so for me cause I am the one who has to bake it. We managed to find a way around this though but I was still a bit upset about it.




Brought this issue about the insane custom cake orders up to the boss once and all she had to say was...



"It's her job to take this orders and if we have more orders then everyone will become happier, the bakers will be happier because more order equals to more sales."



I think she is forgetting about the part where we still get paid the same amount no matter how good sales are. If I am getting paid the same amount to do less work, why the hell would I be happier to do more.







Last I checked, she has put up a job ad to look for new bakers and I do feel sorry for the new bakers who are about to get hired because they have no idea the mountain of workload that will be piled up on them after they get hired, especially during the festive seasons, they can say goodbye to taking a public bus home during that period because by the time they knock off work by then.




After blogging about this, the thought of having to go to work tomorrow suddenly feels that much more dreadful.