Bakery Rules

It turns out that a number of things I learned at the bakery apply in other realms, including the office where I now work. Feel free to use them if they're useful to you.

1. Not every day can be a good day.

Bossman says this when something fucks up (or someone fucks something up). I particularly appreciated this when I was the person who fucked things up, but, in general, it's a useful thing to keep in mind. People make mistakes; it's just one of the things we do. Ergo, any plan that requires that everything go absolutely perfectly is a shaky plan. It's a much better idea to have some backup systems in place, though even they are going to fail you sometimes.

2. Blame won't laminate the dough or bake the bread.

It's kind of a corollary to the above. Bossman didn't say this, but the "not every day can be a good day" thing is, I always thought, a way to deflect that blaming. On one hand, if someone consistently fucks up a product, or consistently fucks up, then s/he isn't going to be a great fit--perhaps they should be packing cookies instead of mixing dough. But the kind of blaming and finger-pointing that has been going around in my office is really a waste of time and energy.

3. The person you think of as "that asshole" may still be the person you need to mix your dough.

In the bakery, despite the various tidbits I narrated for the amusement of you guys, people were pretty much expected to just deal with each other. The kind of backbiting and throwing people under the bus that we've been seeing in my office job weren't as prevalent. Everyone had their buttons, of course, but mostly everyone got along, especially once Brad was gone.

Part of this was structural, in at least two ways: For one thing, the "hierarchy" was nearly non-existent. Bossman was working right there alongside everyone else, not sitting in an office "downtown." He might be down in the office doing the books or something, and he was much more able to take off a day or a few days, but, in general, he worked hours that were almost as grueling as anyone else's. Thus, jockeying for "position" was kind of pointless; there weren't positions for which to jockey. (That's also why Brad was a problem: he imposed pointless hierarchy, and it just annoyed everyone.)

The other structural reason for this was that there were just enough tasks that required others' cooperation to complete that it wasn't a good idea to completely piss off someone else. This guy may do all the cookies or all the cakes, but he needs that guy to do at least some of the baking for him. The other person may need help making this product. Everyone may need to gather around the line to make bear claws, which means the person in charge of the bear claws better have his ducks in a row before taking everyone away from their work. I tacitly referred to this when I gave Phil credit for baking the croissants (and I could always tell when it was him and not one of the night guys who had done the baking, because Phil did it better)--I knew that, while my lamination was crucial, baking was a huge part of their beauty, and giving him credit for it acknowledged that. You can take the most beautiful product in the world, and if you bake it wrong, it's going to suck. Same thing is true in office-world, but not everyone seems to realize that.

Finally, though, it was a really good crew of guys, who had known each other and worked together for more than ten years--more than 15 years in some cases. It wasn't terribly difficult to get along with them, at least in my case. If you work hard, do your job, lend a hand, and don't be an asshole, you'll get along just fine. This is more a personality thing than a structural thing, but it does speak, a little, to Bossman's selection of people to work there. He was tolerant of people's personality quirks--basically, he ignored them or, when necessary, worked around them--which definitely set a tone.

4. It takes four times to get it right.

Bossman always says it takes making a new recipe four times to get it right, and that proved itself to be true so many times. Even if you get really close the first time, you're still going to want to do some tweaking--fill the mold a little less, bake it a little longer, use a different shape or size, whatever. You can't change everything at once--especially if you don't know exactly which thing will get you closer to where you're trying to get--so you're going to have to do it more than once or twice. Sometimes, of course, you just have to take a shot and go with it; you don't have time to tweak. But if you take notes, then next time you're going to get a little closer. And, on the flip side of this, expecting perfection from someone else the first time out of the gate is a pretty sure road to disappointment.

5. Meetings are generally fucking useless.

A few months ago, when I stopped in the bakery, we were laughing about how a "meeting" at the bakery was when Phil was loading the oven and I was cutting croissants and Bossman was making galettes and we talked about when we were going to make the rolls, because I was needed to be part of that operation. I'm completely making up the example, but the reality is, the real work didn't stop for "meetings." In my current job, managers--especially at my boss's level--go to so many fucking meetings that it's not even funny. Every time I turn around he has to meet with someone else in the organization, often at another location; what meetings mostly do is take him away from his actual work. As a result, the actual work takes even longer, because the people who need to do it are stuck in stupid meetings. It kind of blows me away sometimes.

The other part about it is the amount of hand-holding that seems to be needed. Some of that is structural: we need some systemic solutions to many of the issues we've been facing, and there are no systems in place, so everyone's kind of struggling a bit, but there's still a notion that when person A has a question, person B--and sometimes person C and person D--need to drop everything to solve person A's problem or question. I try not to fall into that myself, and I recognize that sometimes you really do need an answer before you can go on with your work, but it can make it difficult.

Anyway. I need to get some sleep. I should be packing and watering my plants--Friend and I are heading out of town tomorrow for part of the weekend--but I don't feel like it. There will be time tomorrow.