Pros
Free meal per shift Work at your own pace and mostly by yourself in your own corner (an introvert utopia) Tips from customers shared by whole team including the baker Pay can go up pretty quickly and plus tips you can make a decent amount if you play by your manager’s rules You can get leftover product to take home easily and constantly after they’re closed for the day Decent benefits as far as I can tell. Even started offering pet health insurance recently.
Cons
Horrific management with sketchy business practices Better watch your workday hours because they might just disappear to make your bosses labour quota look good The only thing the HR is good for is facilitating retaliation, just forget about it No support from management, only constant scolding and gaslighting, especially if you’re a slow baker. But no suggestions or additional training to help you get faster (because that also costs labour). Company is “experimenting” to test even more ways to trim labour and costs of operation to maximize profit, while you work with broken, hazardous equipment which still doesn’t count as an excuse for being slower. Here’s a challenge: bake your bake with no proofer in the same amount of time as normally expected with an industrial proofer. How? I’ll never tell. Big time Nepotism Town, USA Just don’t do it. Unless you’re so desperate that you’re willing to put up with abuse and fight your own way through your bake just to make your bills then I completely understand. I sure am desperate. To be fair it’s worth mentioning that this is my experience from my market. But overall it’s a mixed bag depending on where you land your baker position. But one thing to keep in mind: company as a whole is still moving towards automating and simplifying their whole structure, so they’re already aggressively trimming off jobs left and right.