To be fair, I wasn’t fired, I was laid off…
Let’s Wind Back a Bit
Ten o clock, ten minutes into the pleasantries, so the heavy talk began:
“Understand, this is not a reflection of your performance”
Fair enough, but not enough to quell the furious voice raging inside me:
“FIRE SOMEBODY ELSE THEN!”
Luckily, as is so often the case, the long journey to my mouth quickly quenched this fire to a mere;
“No, no, no, don’t worry! I understand, honestly”
So now what? What do you do with the dream job, when the dream job’s taken away?
The Job
A baker is what I was, still am, I suppose.
After four years of studying Physics, the last year of which was spent watching bricks cool, my relationship with academia was on the rocks. On July 22nd, the day of my graduation, we decided, amicably, to divorce. One week later, as a new whale species became know to science in the North Pacific, I had a job.
With two phone calls and a cheeky reference (I used to pot wash for the executive chef) and I was an Artisan baker for one of North Wales’ biggest restaurant company: Dylan’s. I’d never had it so good. Sourdough boules, white and brown batards, two foot focaccia and French brioche rolls, we did them all, by hand, daily.
For one, glorious year, I was allowed to play baker, in a facility where no expense was spared. Rationale Ovens, real wooden bannetones, 12kg Hobart mixers and Anglesey Sea Salt. Every day I’d make sure to have experiment on the go, scribbling all my observations and new recipes down in an old, flour encrusted annual planner. It became my new lab book, and I’d simply moved laboratories, with bread, not bricks, as my subject.
I couldn’t have been any happier. From dough rheology, to fermentation, enzyme activity to dough relaxation times, I learned everything I could, all whilst being mentored by Pesda’s best becar. Under his supervision, I found myself venturing deep into the unknown, and reveling in it:
White Chocolate Strawberry loaves, Treacle & Walnut tins, New York Deli Ryes,
things that would have meant days, or even weeks of planning and research at home became part of daily life in the bakery.
The master plan was afoot, I was on my way. I would be the best baker North Wales had ever seen.
It’s not you, it’s me…
“Understand we hate this as much as anyone…”
“SO EASIER NOT TO TALK TO ME FOR TWO WEEKS!?!”
“Naaaah, na…exactly. You know, it’s a crap situation for everyone isn’t it…”
With that, I was done.
No real reasoning, no mounting tensions, just the logical conclusion to bad forecasting and .
This is the true tragedy of losing the dream job. Underneath the stories, beneath all our hopes and our dreams, we’re all just machines, built on old, faulty software, who’s only imperative, is to keep us alive. It’s therefore understandable that today, when ‘life and limb’ is more likely a hashtag than a metric of risk, our brains are the ones making fools of us all.
Confirmation bias, extrapolation bias, Illusion of Validity, call it what you like, the truth is that nobody likes loss. In fact, it’s been proven that we process loss roughly twice as strongly as we do a win:
£10 should cover the cost of that £5
This, in essence, is the problem with the dream job, it’s by definition, too good to lose. Exactly like the go-lucky forecaster, my lucky break had put a polish on my future, and although the overall picture hadn’t changed, losing that shine wasn’t easy:
Keeping £5 after winning £10 will feel more like you’ve nothing at all
Do keep in touch, won’t you …
“We’ll do everything we can for now, you can do some shifts in the restaurant…”
“LUCKY I’M ALREADY WORKING FOR SOMEBODY ELSE!”
“Ye…that could be good…”
Philosophy’s well and good and all, but what about the money? Idealism alone won’t pay the bills!
The thing is, I was fortunate enough to have another job at the time, the true great idea I’d had. Diversifying away from the dream job.
Before even starting at Dylan’s, the idea was to experience as much as I could of the culinary world. Hence why, 6 months earlier, I took another job making pizzas for the Pizza & Pint in Llanberris. This, despite leaving me with 4 hours of sleep a night, had me working in kitchens for around 70 hours a week, the thorough culinary immersion I was after.
This made losing my job somewhat of a blessing. I now have my time, energy and most importantly, my mental health back in shape. Without that push, I wouldn’t be writing this, Artisaniaeth.com wouldn’t exist, and I’d be doing nothing but working, eating, sleeping and…working.
Not that being discarded gets any easier, don’t get me wrong, it’s an awful feeling, bad enough for me to have to write a sob story about it. But such a upheaval will always remind you that you are not your job!
If you keep learning, keep moving and keep your eye on the horizon then you’ll never lose get lost in the turmoil of the waves.
Extra reading
If you’ve enjoyed this, taken solace from it, or simply found joy in my plight, feel free to read more here a day in the life of a baker, with all the joys, sorrows and physical punishment that come with it.
