no justice, no peace.

I’m not on this site much anymore, but it’s still the place I feel most anonymous so I can spill my most private thoughts. 

I’ve been thinking about California a lot lately. We’ve been seriously talking about buying a house. I know the first one will be in St Pete, but I think about CA every day. The feeling I had there was so pure and blissful. I know if we moved there we’d have our problems, but I love the atmosphere and the climate. I also think I may benefit for a change of scenery like moving cross- country. I’ve been staying in a safe space, relying on my father for approval and monetary help. I just need a change. Owning a home is so scary because it’s such a long term commitment. I  want to be with Nick for the rest of my life, but I don’t want Florida to be our resting place. 

Plus, the Pacific coast and mountains are absolutely beautiful. I miss those views every day. I want to go back to CA every day. 

1. DON’T LITTER
2. Use cross walks
3. Hydrate
4. Don’t fuck with wild animals!!**
5. Eat at locally owned restaurants
6. Tip your servers well!!
7. HYDRATE
8. D O N O T L I T T E R F F S
9. Be respectful of the residents
10. HYDRATE HYDRATE HYDRATE

** brown sand dollars are ALIVE please leave them alone! Also DO NOT take live conchs, sea stars, or horseshoe crabs! But take all the empty shells you want!!

I basically only use tumblr anymore to vent, but its one of the only places i’m still pretty anonymous.

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I don’t make a lot of posts on here anymore, but it’s 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 hour’s worth of traffic going there from my previous job.)

–The second red flag should have been being hired on the spot. I’ve come to realize this means “I’m desperate for an able bodied person” not necessarily “you’re the perfect fit for the job”

Then there was the job itself. It wasn’t a difficult job. In fact, from what I was used to, it was downright easy. 

–Red flag #3: No actual training. I had to figure out everything as I went along and basically just asked questions when I couldn’t figure it out. 

Then, just a few weeks in, I’m told I’m to become manager. I learned that “I’m going to talk to you about…” actually meant “I need you to do (blank) but you’ll have to figure it out yourself.”

Here’s the kicker about becoming the manager: There’s no need to write a schedule for 2 people. Waste of paper.

–Red flag #4: NO INVENTORY LIST. It’s beyond me how any food establishment didn’t 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. 

–Next red flag (#5): We had no dedicated ordering system/company. No Aramark, No Sysco, or anything of the sort. We didn’t 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: WE’RE A GOD DAMN “GOURMET” CUPCAKE BAKERY. Every cupcakes was made with a “premium bakers mix” (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. 

Then there’s the customer service aspect. 

–#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. 

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 wasn’t fully aware of the capabilities of the cake decorator, or pricing on any specialty decoration. 

–(#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 didn’t 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 “inconvenience” to deliver her a cake, even after she agreed to meet him halfway, with a 1-year old (the cake was for the baby’s birthday) AND HE WAS 45 MINUTES LATE MEETING HER. 

–(#11) Then when she didn’t receive the cake design or flavors she asked for, e blamed his “stupid employees who can’t take a f–king order” 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 couldn’t remember his employees names, and then when he fired them after a few weeks or a month or two, he would say things like “I never liked them anyway.” 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 I’ve 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 wasn’t needed anymore the next morning. 

Other concerns were that 

(#14) he would frequently change business hours and close randomly which frustrated potential customers, turning them off to the business. As well as 

(#15) Being caught in several lies, like if I ask where he’s at and he says he’s at home, tell him what I need and he immediately says “well I’m not at home” or if I tell him someone’s here for an appointment with him, he says he can’t make it and has to reschedule (30-45 mins after the original appointment time) and 

(#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. 

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 it’s going to be very difficult to talk about this job without making it sound like I’m dragging my previous boss through the mud, when in all honesty he brought it all on himself.

Now he’s running one of his two stores all by himself (of which he was never around when he had employees working it for him so I’m guessing It’s going to be closed a lot more often) 

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.