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Post Info TOPIC: Cake decorating troubles...
Bakerchick25

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Cake decorating troubles...
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Back story/long story short: Short hours, much packaging for the cookie promos we have going on, and as usual behind as hell in bakery. Will add that our chronic complainer from the deli came down wanting a cake for her baby shower. Cool, thought she wanted to order one. Nada, she wanted to see if I could draw something on one of the ones we already have. I can't draw for ****, so she suggested that she could put her baby's name on it and hearts. Which I thought would be a few seconds and she would pay for it and it be done.

But nope, after the initial name and hearts, she comes back saying she wasn't feeling the cake she picked. And wanted to know if we had others in the freezer. Which I said most likely. I didn't really have time to stop and check(and mind you, I wasn't going to as I was finally slacking out the doughnuts(and thank the lord not another customer order to slack out for too), and was not stopping). So of course she goes to peek in the freezer and sees the boxes and says that instead of getting another one down from the top shelf. She's like can I use more of the frosting to do more designs on the cake and even ask if it looks crappy after a while. Again I wasn't really giving her any attention as I was trying to get stuff cleaned up and work on my doughnuts and so forth.

And of course she is taking forty forevers to do whatever the heck she was doing. To the point the other deli folks are coming down and are like "(insert her name here) what are you doing? You know we have some more cleaning stuff to do(as we had a cleaning list to work on since earlier in the day) and your down here playing with a cake(bit more background: Aside from being a chronic complainer about stuff. She isn't quite the best worker and tends to take a bunch of breaks, etc. And in general grating on most peeps nerves. And plenty of the older workers are more than content with telling the managers about her "work ethic" or lack thereof)". To which it got on one such person's nerves enough last night that she did tell the closing manager what she was doing instead of helping me clean up stuff. And naturally he came down to see what she was doing and went back and forth with the other person that told him what was happening. Until it finally came down to the point of him telling her to do that after she clocked out(which I think is not correct either. But he's a new manager and still feeling out the store a bit so doesn't know all the does and don't's on things yet), and help me with stuff. And she did clean my doughnut case and did some floor sweeping for me(AFTER I had put the cake away in the cooler).

So by chance, how much trouble(if any), do you think that I could get in for letting her decorate her own cake? I know I should have just told her to get it tomorrow and let our decorator put the name and hearts or whatever she wanted on it. But she comes in at the time that our decorator has left for the day(no ride to make it in earlier to pick it up earlier and even get the decorator to put what she wanted on there). And we'd be in the same spot again just with another bakery co-worker, that could possibly get into trouble for letting her draw on her cake for her.

So am I in for a write up? Tongue lashing? Suspension or something?



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Anonymous

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As long as she's an employee, she can decorate her own cake, but it can't interfere with her normal work and if she messes it up, she can't redo another one.  I think a lot of deli employees like to come down and "play" in the bakery.   Also, if she picks a cake already decorated out of the case, with exception of writing an inscription on it, it is to be taken as is with no additional decorations.  If she wants one specially made, tell her she'll have to place and order for one.  The earliest I'll take a cake order for is one hour after the cake decorator is scheduled to come in the next day.  Most of the time we require 24 hours notice.



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Bakerchick25

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Anonymous wrote:

As long as she's an employee, she can decorate her own cake, but it can't interfere with her normal work and if she messes it up, she can't redo another one.  I think a lot of deli employees like to come down and "play" in the bakery.   Also, if she picks a cake already decorated out of the case, with exception of writing an inscription on it, it is to be taken as is with no additional decorations.  If she wants one specially made, tell her she'll have to place and order for one.  The earliest I'll take a cake order for is one hour after the cake decorator is scheduled to come in the next day.  Most of the time we require 24 hours notice.


 Awesome, thanks for clearing that up for me. I mean I went into work yesterday and my boss didn't mention anything other than the fact that one of the air ducts was missed being cleaned the night before. And none of the bakery folks chewed me out over it either really. But I'll be more than honest and say I don't ever want to be in that position again. I was literally sweating bullets over if that manager had talked to some of the others about it and it got back to my DH. Not to say he is a harsh supervisor as in yelling at people about stuff like that. But still, I don't need my bosses thinking I'm just letting anybody come on down and "play" with the product and other stuff at night all willy nilly, instead of there being actual work getting done/ruining product for the floor. Not to mention giving me the side eye in regards to my judgment about decision-making. As I was doing my work for the night.

But for future reference, I'm for sure going to let any of the deli and other co-workers know. That if it's not a simple write a name on the cake kind of thing. Just talk to the decorator about it. And thankfully it's only been the co-worker I was talking about that ask these sort of favors at times(as she wanted one of the 1/8 sheet cakes for a cheaper price. I mean I wrote her message on there. And I told her the most she could do is act like the other customers and say at the check out that she wasn't happy with the writing to get it sent back so we have to put a make it right sticker on there. But I couldn't just put one on there from the get go. Most especially if she was using her plus card in the first place when buying it anyway). So I don't have to be in situations like this again. And just reminds me all the more reason why they need a inter-departmental hand book as well on this kind of thing. Thanks again.



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