I was talking to one of the lovely Korean lady in our church. She had just finished a 3 month internship work experience at a local French bakery factory for her course of study as a pastry chef at Le Cordon Bleu.
She was tearing as she tried to explain to me the immense sense of relief when she could finally hand in her apron and keys to the manager, because the short stint at that bakery factory was nothing short of hell for her.
She told me she could not understand why her manager treated her the way he did. She asked me if I understood her English. I told her she speaks fine and probably needs to be a bit more confident when she speaks, but she speaks simple but proper English.
She told me that one of the recipes for a type of flavoured croissant was wrong. She tried telling the manager this and even offered a solution to perfect the recipe. Was ignored. After a few attempts to inform the manager again about this mistake resulted in scathing comments such as 'Why do you not follow instructions? Just do what was written!' and 'Why is the pastry like that? You out to waste ingredients and waste my time? Just follow the recipe!'
She tried telling the manager the equipment she need to replace in the kitchen when something broke down, was ignored yet again and she had to manually do some stuff, which resulted in a shorter turnaround time for delivery & nicer tasting pastries; and of course she got the blame for this.
She tried to be friendly, got a blank stare.
She tried to speak to the boss, and was rewarded by a scolding down by that said manager for 'by-passing authorities'.
She did not get proper paperwork for the internship and I tried to offer her some solutions to get proper accreditation and I hope she will take up my advice. Her pleas for paper contract fell on deaf ears, last I heard.
She told me when she tendered to the boss following the end of the stint, her boss told her to just leave the key on the table and her apron beside it and go, because her gruelling midnight shift ends at 7am on her last day.
When her manager found out, he insisted on coming to the factory at 7am to do 'paperwork'. She was so upset. She said 'Tell me, Eliss, does he not trust me at all? All these months I work there, I work so hard. I bake so many things, he never trust me. He didn't think I have any feelings. Why does he think I am out to cheat him all the time? I dun see him treat other chefs the way he treat me. Why?'
I gave her a hug. I have no answers for her.
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