I donât make a lot of posts on here anymore, but itâs disconnected from all of my other social accounts, so I feel like this is a place I can discreetly make this long-winded post about my horrible ex-job and ex-boss.
Back in October I found an ad on craigslist for a cupcake baker/decorator position. This is what I had been doing for nearly two years, but was full-time and closer to home. I make plans to interview for this position.
--The first red flag should have been when he blew me off and had to reschedule the interview. (a call 30 minutes prior would have been nice considering I fought and hourâs worth of traffic going there from my previous job.)
--The second red flag should have been being hired on the spot. Iâve come to realize this means âIâm desperate for an able bodied personâ not necessarily âyouâre the perfect fit for the jobâ
Then there was the job itself. It wasnât a difficult job. In fact, from what I was used to, it was downright easy.Â
--Red flag #3: No actual training. I had to figure out everything as I went along and basically just asked questions when I couldnât figure it out.Â
Then, just a few weeks in, Iâm told Iâm to become manager. I learned that âIâm going to talk to you about...â actually meant âI need you to do (blank) but youâll have to figure it out yourself.â
Hereâs the kicker about becoming the manager: Thereâs no need to write a schedule for 2 people. Waste of paper.
--Red flag #4: NO INVENTORY LIST. Itâs beyond me how any food establishment didnât have some type of list to keep track of what was coming into the store and at what rate it was going out. I literally had to write my own.Â
--Next red flag (#5): We had no dedicated ordering system/company. No Aramark, No Sysco, or anything of the sort. We didnât even have detergent/sanitizer dispensers until we started sharing the space with a new small pizzeria who installed one. He bought all our supplies at a bulk food store (think Costco or Restaurant Depot) and only ordered what we needed when we needed it, never thinking ahead. That leads me to ingredients.
--#6: WEâRE A GOD DAMN âGOURMETâ CUPCAKE BAKERY. Every cupcakes was made with a âpremium bakers mixâ (read: cake mix) and all frosting was also made from a base, with the exception of the cream cheese frosting. No flour, sugar, butter, eggs, etc. Just mix, oil, and water. And a bucket of frosting.. Yuck.Â
Then thereâs the customer service aspect.Â
--#7: No sure way to count tips on our ordering system. BECAUSE
--#8: We switched POS systems (sort of?) suddenly. We were still using the old system to clock in/out and do cash transactions, but using Square for card transactions. It was sloppy and weird, and was a pain in the ass because we were supposed to add tax to certain things but not others and we had no way to print receipts.Â
On top of all of that was the way he treated clients. He has two stores, and one makes cakes primarily. He offered cake pickup at both stores, even though one was roughly 10 miles away from the other. This caused confusion because I wasnât fully aware of the capabilities of the cake decorator, or pricing on any specialty decoration.Â
--(#9) On a side note, I had a often courier things between store with no gas/mileage reimbursement, and off the clock.
He was so desperate for business, he would try and cut deals and do cakes for whatever price the client was willing to pay, even if that mean fudging the truth about what they were getting (fondant vs buttercream, etc). He would offer clients to send pictures about what they wanted their cake to look like then never show them to the decorator, so in effect the client didnât receive what they asked for.
-- (#10) He would be consistently rude to customers who complained about their cakes or experience. He has several 1-star reviews on Yelp with pictures of expectation/reality of the cakes and text screenshots berating customers and begging to remove negative reviews. He told a client to her face it was an âinconvenienceâ to deliver her a cake, even after she agreed to meet him halfway, with a 1-year old (the cake was for the babyâs birthday) AND HE WAS 45 MINUTES LATE MEETING HER.Â
--(#11) Then when she didnât receive the cake design or flavors she asked for, e blamed his âstupid employees who canât take a f--king orderâ when HE was the one who spoke with her, finalized the order, and handed me the order form. Speaking of employees..
--(#12) He hired people quickly, which lead to high turnover for very ethically wrong reasons. He couldnât remember his employees names, and then when he fired them after a few weeks or a month or two, he would say things like âI never liked them anyway.â He told me straight up he fired someone for not giving him an address to a former employee(who also happened to be his ex-husband, to whom he had to serve divorce papers).
I voiced my concern because Iâve never been in a place with such high turnover. I was there from October 17th to December 28th, and saw four people out the door (two of which came in during the same time frame).
--(#13) I was told I wasnât needed anymore the next morning.Â
Other concerns were thatÂ
(#14) he would frequently change business hours and close randomly which frustrated potential customers, turning them off to the business. As well asÂ
(#15) Being caught in several lies, like if I ask where heâs at and he says heâs at home, tell him what I need and he immediately says âwell Iâm not at homeâ or if I tell him someoneâs here for an appointment with him, he says he canât make it and has to reschedule (30-45 mins after the original appointment time) andÂ
(#16) going completely M.I.A. for entire days at a time leaving employees scrambling for supplies and trying to answer difficult questions, fearing making the wrong choice and being reprimanded later.Â
I wrote this trying to be as objective as possible. This management was a hot mess from start to finish, but in interviews going forward itâs going to be very difficult to talk about this job without making it sound like Iâm dragging my previous boss through the mud, when in all honesty he brought it all on himself.
Now heâs running one of his two stores all by himself (of which he was never around when he had employees working it for him so Iâm guessing Itâs going to be closed a lot more often)Â
This job was so frustrating the entire time, and I seriously tried the best I could, but I had nothing but anxiety from this job. Karma will come back to him, I know it.Â
