The inmates have taken over the asylum.

I am now the bakery manager at my work. I was assistant bakery manager at Sam's Club, which I took for the money. It was possibly the worst work-related mistake I ever made (even worse than working 4 jobs simultaneously, I had an alarm clock in my CAR). I knew that I was over-qualified for Sam's Club (there wasn't any scratch baking there, which is what I had done for 13 years before that), but I don't like change and didn't have any other bakery opportunities that had scratch baking. But then my current job came along, which promised all scratch baking and, I guess a sort of independence. At Sam's Club, all of the ordering was done by the home office, and we could only make what they told us. Now I can make whatever I want, and it is encouraged.

Back to the manager thing. When I applied at my current job, I told them up front that there were 2 things I didn't want: 1) to make cakes, and 2) to be in charge. For a few years we didn't really have a manager, but some of my co-workers looked to me for answers, hopefully because I had a lot more baking experience, and not because I was the only guy in the department (I still am). It came up a few times where they asked me to be the manager, and I said no. But I was sometimes treated as the manager, which made me very uncomfortable. This time, they asked me to think about it (the current manager has had enough; she did a good job, but it's too much stress on her), which they never did before. I realized that I don't hate my job like I did at Sam's; my supervisor trusts me and will back me up; and there isn't a home office 800 miles away that is in charge, but really has no idea what is going on at store level. Plus, I can hopefully push my own agenda through now that I am in charge. I do all the yeast stuff at work, but I also make the pastries and quick breads, and I also set up the frozen rolls (like kaiser and steak rolls, we need equipment to make them properly and to save time, which we don't have). It's getting to the point where I can't handle all of that in 8 hours. I would like to come in and just make the bread, and have different sorts of bread each day. I try to do that now, but I just don't have enough time. My goal is to come in around 1 am and make the yeast stuff, and that's it. Then someone could come in at 4 and set up the frozen stuff that needs to be baked off. If I have time at the end of the day, I could do benchwork (which is what I call making up danish and pastries etc. and putting them into the freezer, to be baked off as needed). 

I like working by myself a lot, but at this point, I would rather have the help, because it gets extremely busy in the fall, and I haven't really had time to enjoy a fall in years. I am hoping as the manager that I can make my supervisors understand this. 

The only problem with being in charge is telling people what to do. I hate doing this. Sarah suggested years ago, when I was at Sam's, to ask people to do something, and not tell them. That works great for me. I say please and thank you a lot, and I make sure to thank everyone when I leave (and I wasn't even in charge when I was doing this, so maybe that's a part of why people thought I was in charge). I suppose that's not the only problem; I don't deal well with conflict, and I don't feel that I'm a good mediator. So I will have to work on that. It boils down to the fact that I don't want to be the bad guy, but it may come to that at some point. I'll just have to burn that bridge when I come to it.