poetry in commotion...

The Baker's Delight Cadetship

If you remember about 4 or 5 weeks back I made a post saying that I had a desire to get out of Perth, work in a different place, meet new people. This story begins the day after that post. Feeling decidedly adventurous, I applied for several entry level graduate positions over in Victoria, expecting quite frankly never to hear from them again. No one really wants to go to the trouble of flying over a graduate from WA when there are plenty already looking for a job in Victoria. So for the most part I didn't hear back from any of them, except for a response to Baker's Delight, a half hearted last minute application with a cover letter addressing an entirely different job (since I reuse cover letters except to reword/add to them based on the job).

About a week later, I recieved a wake up call on my mobile at an ungodly 8am in the morning, the caller asking for me and idenitfying herself as part of Baker's Delight. I had somehow impressed her with my resume and cover letter with its obvious glaring errors, and she wanted to talk to me about my application . She asked me if I knew that it was a Victorian position, and that it wasn't an office job etc. I told her I was basically fine with moving, and as usual she conducted a phone interview lasting about 15 minutes, after which she told me that she was going to forward my application to WA for me since they were planning on running a cadet program too, but there was no expected timeline for the cadetship. I thanked and shrugged it off, foguring it was a brush off and that I'd never hear from them again.

About two weeks later I received a call in the middle of my nap (haha notice a trend? :P) from a certain Allana Edwards, asking me about my application. She conducted a mini interview over the phone, and asked me what my understanding of the cadetship was. I guess I went well over the phone interview too, because she asked me to come in late friday afternoon about two weeks ago for a face to face interview. As I walked into the office I was greeted with a pretty woman in her early to mid 30s with a friendly smiling face, meant to put me at ease I'm sure. Either way, I flirted with her throughout the course of the interview, which went quite well, and by the end of the interview she pretty much told me I'd made it to the second round of the interview, before even calling her counterparts. I received another call from her at 8am on the following tuesday (waking me up yet again) for the second interview, which was conducted on friday. I walked into that interview with a suit and tie, only to be greeted with a man and woman (the business consultant and bakery manager) who introduced themselves as Emma and Jason respectively, dressed in tshirts and jeans, telling me that they're laid back people and that this would be a very informal interview/meeting. Great. Thanks for the heads up. This second interview was a lot harder than the firt interview, as they asked a few questions that I hadn't expected, and it took all of my skills to come up with answers quickly. By the end of the interview they too were pretty impressed with me, with quite a bit of help from the afore mentioned Allana, who sat in on the interview too and interjected on my behalf many times, helping me out by bringing up skills etc that I had that would be helpful to my job. They offered me the job later that day, on the condition that I do a two day trial of certain aspects of my job to see if I could handle it.

Last Tuesday began the first day of my trial, which saw me working at the Baker's Delight store in Murray Street Perth in a sales sort of role at 11.15 in the late morning. As I walked into the store the counter manager introduced herself to me and asked me who I was, and what was a Baker's Delight cadet? This would be a question that would be asked many times over the next two days, as I quickly found myself with the knowledge that I was the first Baker's Delight cadet in WA. Go me. It also slowly dawned on me as I talked to the bakery manager (the same one who interviewed me) and other people in the organisation, no one really knew what a cadet was either. Now, essentially to me, the Baker's Delight cadetship was a position that trained me up in all practical aspects of the business with the aim of making me a manager, and possibly being groomed for higher roles. Essentially, a trainee manager. However, the varied responses and descriptions of a cadetship by the bakery manager left me in no doubt that he didn't know what a cadet was, and as the two days wore on, I myself began to doubt what a cadet was. But more on this later. The counter manager with whom I would be working under that day was a rotund over preppy anally retentive woman names Sarah who within minutes of finding out what a cadet was (according to me) began to be quite jealous, making barbed comments about how she had worked her way up from the bottom to be manager while I came into the organisation at her level. I responded with a suitable subtle comment implying that having brains and getting a formal education really does help bypass menial sales positions. Thankfully I am brilliant at being disingenuous as well as playing innocent, so she couldn't decide whether I had intended to imply what I did, though she did study my face intently after I had said it. The rest of the day was pretty normal, and I left at 5.30.

My next day began at 2am the next morning, as evidenced by my previous post. Due to my going out to dinner after work (which ran quite late) and my abnormal sleeping patterns (i had become used to sleeping at 3am in the morning), I couldn't sleep for more than 10 minutes, and essentially went to work without any sleep. I drove out in the cold morning shivering and cursing, and waited outside for 15 minutes past 3, as my co workers had decided to be late on that day. Walking into Garden City at 3.15, a feeling of living the child fantasy of staying the night at a shopping mall sprang to mine as I stared at all the stores, wondering if my lockpicking skills were up to scratch, or failing that, wondering whether a large brick would also gain me entry. Working in the bakery, kneading the dough and pressing them into shapes was quite fun, and working with an all man crew (the previous day had been spent entirely in the company of women, except for Jason who had left early - I think this Jason will be my mentor or something) brought back memories of my days at Action Seafood, with the dirty jokes, the rough laughter and the physical work. When they gave me a knife to cut the dough with, I felt truly at home. I finished at 10am, and finally got home and collapsed into bed at 11am, after having been awake 26 hours, from 9am tuesday to 11am wednesday. I received a call from Emma on last friday assuring me they really wanted me in the organisation and that they were busy at the moment, since they had supposed to call me on that wednesday to see how I liked it, but hadn't done so. Turns out I had gotten really positive reviews from both managers I had worked with (Sarah and Jason).

Now, over the interview process to the two trial days I have begun to realise several truths about Baker's Delight that have since made me wonder about the future of my new place of employment. Firstly, the realisation that all three of my interviewers have no idea what a cadet does, or indeed what they're going to do with me. They have no training program, no idea of what I should be paid and what the timeline of this cadetship is. Secondly, is the realisation that I am vastly overqualified for this position, and that I am better educated than all of my superiors. With these realisations comes the opportunity to exploit them. I've realised that I can effectively dictate my working terms and pace of learning, and that I can possibly advance fast if I can handle the responsibilities required of me. This position is a good opportunity. I just hope I can adequately cope with the job. Sometimes a person can be the smartest and most qualified for the job, but the job just isn't suited to that person. Still, right now a job beats being unemployed, and like every graduate, it is the start in the business world I'm looking for.

Not exactly the most captivating post I know, but apparently there is some interest in me no longer being unemployed, so here's the full story :P I'll detail my experiences and epiphany I've had recently in a near future post, so stay tuned!

posted by jaseypoo! @ 12:19 AM