Or, "Why Baltimore?" I get this question a lot--not so much from the few readers who happen onto here, but from my co-workers, a lot of whom have never lived anywhere BUT Baltimore, and can't seem to fathom someone purposefully coming out here. :-) So, be warned--this series of posts has very little to do with cake, and more to do with personal life. Maybe this is evolving into a combination of the two!
Earlier this year/late 2012, things at my job in Santa Fe had been...let's say strained. They'd promised me a lot of things when they'd hired me, and then conveniently forgot those things/delayed indefinitely delivering upon them. I'd been trying to push them to follow through for some months, and had reached the end of my tether when, after all that, they cut my hours and started scheduling me as though I were some sort of fill-in baker/decorator. Instead of having more wedding cakes than I could handle, as I'd been promised, suddenly I was relegated to early morning shifts of baking cakes and decorating cupcakes--not what I wanted to be doing.
The kicker was that even the wedding work I DID have (returning e-mails, taking consultations, creating invoices, etc.) suddenly was to take a back seat to this other work. The owner claimed there wasn't enough wedding work to meet the hours I wanted (the full-time 40 hour workweek I'd been promised, which--even with the grunt work--I was falling FAR short of). But he also refused my repeated requests to purchase booth space at local wedding events, claiming he only did the shows that were free for him to attend (BTW, these don't exist or, if they do, they don't bring in the clientele he would be aiming for anyway). I saw the writing on the wall: while I was bringing in a fair share of work from the referrals sent by hotel and coordinator contacts I'd made, it was clear to me that they would do anything they could to avoid fulfilling the golden job opportunity they'd claimed to want to give me a year prior.
I'd asked for and been granted time off in February of this year (unpaid, naturally, as paid time off was one of those things they conveniently forgot having offered me, and I--trusting as I was--had never gotten the details of my offer in writing). My plan was to visit my sister, niece, and brother-in-law in DC--in the weeks leading up to my trip, the manager (a clueless, micromanaging "I want to help you, but only if it doesn't inconvenience me" types) kept alluding to how much fun she was sure I'd have, and how I'd be so much happier when I came back (as though my trip would magically erase my memory of just how much I felt I'd been screwed over by this particular business). My response was usually the same: "yeah, sure--if I come back at all." To which she'd always chuckle, as though it were a funny joke.
Thing was: it wasn't. I'd been thinking for some time about a change. At that point, I'd actually interviewed with a couple other places in Santa Fe, but nothing yet had been something I was willing to leave my wedding cakes for. Because while I had definite feelings against the owners and management of the Santa Fe bakery, I felt a strong connection and obligation toward my wedding clients--both those I'd booked, or was even just in the process of getting to know. Most of those clients had only ever worked with me--I was the person they e-mailed for first contact, I was the person they met with for tastings, I was the person who helped guide their design, and I prepared their quotes, took their payments, and answered their questions. In my mind, though I worked for this bakery, these were still MY clients--my responsibilities.
Nonetheless, I went out to DC for my visit, armed with gifts for my niece, the beginnings of what I now believe was severe flu, and...my cake portfolio.
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