When I walked into the office this morning, there was a giant cart in the middle of the room filled with croissants.
My first reaction went something like this: Woohoo! Pastry party, pastry party, pastry party!
I know, I’m so naive.
Any wholesale professional would immediately recognize that a cartful of pastries means we made a mistake. A pretty big one. And this particular error was all mine. (I put an order for small croissants when we really needed minis.)
This isn’t the first time I’ve messed up. Just last night I sent hamburger buns to a very fancy place that most certainly did not want hamburger buns. I let a chef order multigrain for the next day even though it’s a two-day bread (an error that sent me digging inside the world’s freezingiest freezer). I asked for chocolate chocolate chip cookies instead of regular chocolate chip cookies. But each time, I’ve been able to claim ignorance on all those errors as I’ve been figuring out the ins and outs of this place.
This time, however, I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing. And that little song and dance I was doing in my head, the warm coffee I was imagining would accompany my fresh, flaky croissant, was soon followed by dread and embarassment. I apologized and apologized and apologized some more. This entire week, I was feeling pretty confident about my understanding of Bread & Cie, but once again, I was reminded that there’s still so much to learn.
Later that morning, when everything calmed down and those mistake croissants were, indeed, offered to me for breakfast, I took one. I took a pastry of shame and I ate it, but I didn’t enjoy it. (At least not as much.)
