Tag: achieve

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Becoming Better, Creatively: Baking & Understanding It

Hey Sweeties,

If you’ve read the first post >>CLICK IT>>5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively<<READ IT<<, you’re in the right place. If you haven’t, don’t spoil it for yourself, go back and check it out before finishing up here.

Today, we’ll be touching on the first topic of the original post, Baking & Understanding It. Now, as I said before, everyone reading this may not be a baker or crafter, but that doesn’t stop you from taking this in and analyzing whatever you discovered and taking it on. Remember, all this can be applied to anything. You have to have an open mind and the will to do it. So, let’s get started.

Everything we do has a recipe, whether we made it or it was already there. We know that every recipe can’t be one-size-fits-all. There is too much going on in the world for us to try to live with the cookie-cutter stuff made for us out here. What do you do? You learn it, you make it, and you tweak it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves in talking about techniquing and tweaking.

The Recipe

Let’s say you have a recipe that goes as follows:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 stick of butter or margarine
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 3 1/2 cups of flour
  • 1 Tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Add butter or margarine, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cream until smooth.

Add eggs to a clean medium bowl and beat. Add vanilla and milk to the eggs and mix until combined.

Sift flour and baking powder in a clean medium bowl.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture. Mix until combined. Add half the egg mixture and mix until combined. Repeat this process, mixing 1/3 of the flour mixture, the remainder of the egg mixture, and then the last 1/3 of the flour mixture. Mix until combined. Be sure not to over mix.

Note: This is not a real recipe, so don’t expect it to turn out right if you make it. The point in tis recipe is to see how well you follow instructions and how much patience you have for what you’re working on or wanting to learn. How many of you would have taken a shortcut and threw it all in the bowl?

The Lesson

How much thought you put into perfecting your skill is up to you. You may run across people that don’t notice it, but NEVER, EVER stop perfecting your craft because someone doesn’t see or should I say doesn’t want to see it. Guess what, there a whole lot of people out there that WANT TO AND LOOK FOR “BangQuality.” I’m a BangQuality shopper and I make BangQuality products…. We’ll talk a little bit about what BangQuality is later.

You know, it took me about 3 years to get dough right. I didn’t go to school, no one sat with me and taught me anything. I put in the work and I got the doughnuts, the bread, the soft pretzels, etc.

I was so frustrated. I thought I needed someone because I was a lost cause…but nope. I bought a textbook, and I practiced non-stop. You wanna know how I know my doughnut dough was right? It was because it felt right. All I had was one picture in that textbook as a reference and with my imagination, I created what that dough was supposed to feel like.

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The Employee, The Past, and The Future…Part 2

I know I left part one with a juicy ending, but before I fully explain the juiciness, I’m going back to how things went after my boss spoke with them.

The mood was positive; the workers of the department saw the change and were willing to give them another chance. Well, all good things come to an end.

One day I was messaging my boss about something we discussed the week before. They let me know they were on their way to our location. I said okay and thought this was going to be a regular unscheduled visit. My teammate had been at lunch when the boss arrived. Fast-forward to my teammate returning and me leaving for lunch. The boss pulled my teammate to the side to talk. I asked if they wanted me to wait so someone would be on the floor. They said it was okay and to enjoy my lunch.

I walked back in the door to shocked faces, and I wanted to know what was going on. My teammate passed by with a different look than the one before my lunch. While I was gone, my teammate got fired. Now, I won’t mention the reason for termination, but it all leads to the same question.

Do you dig your own grave when you die?

No.

Well, don’t do it before you die.

Here’s my point. If you have a chance to prove those against you wrong, do it. Don’t give them a reason to speak negatively about you or cheer on your failure. Your decisions and actions determine where you go and how it happens. If you allow yourself to fall victim to negativity, you’re only digging a grave for your character and what you stand for. It then becomes a domino effect. If you dig the first grave, the rest of what makes you, you will assist in burying what’s left.

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The Employee, The Past, and The Future


Do you dig your own grave when you die?….. No!…. Well, don’t do it before you die.

If you have a history with a company and that history just happened to be you as an employee; don’t let your past determine or be your future. Don’t let it affect how you do what you do now. Be the better person and prove those against you wrong.

I have a story to tell about someone I worked with for one month. This story isn’t a bash story or one to make someone feel bad. This story is an experience. I’ll start by giving a little background about myself because I was once in the same position.

I was never a people person, and I hated customer service. What I did understand was that I needed a job, because I would soon have bills of my own to pay. To make a long story short, I was young, I wasn’t the best at it, and I had an attitude out of this world. If the words didn’t come out of my mouth, it showed on my face. I got fired for biting back at rude and angry customers, and I regretted it for a long time. Today, I don’t regret losing any of my jobs because it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way. If I were still doing this today, that would be pitiful. That means I didn’t learn anything.

Okay enough about me.

I started a new job and found out that I would be having a teammate. I thought I recognized the name, and I did. It was someone I encountered some time before starting the job. I thought to myself, “Cool, someone I sort of know.” I didn’t know this person on a personal level, but this person had a positive attitude when we met before.

On our first day together, there were red flags, but I ignored them when I found out this person had a history with the client. I didn’t want that to interfere with how we worked together. I didn’t care about their past issues with the company. We are living in the now; years have passed, and we are more mature.

After the first day, the negativity and paranoia began. Every day there was something negative to say, something to complain about, and added hostility to the environment. I made sure we were able to work together, but it had gotten to a point where I couldn’t stand to be around the nonsense. No one in the department wanted to be within a 50-foot radius of my teammate. Now, I have a high tolerance, maybe a little too high tolerance, but I eventually reached my breaking point. On the day I reached that point, I was exhausted and needed all my energy to engage with customers. The following situation is what tipped the bucket. A customer walked up, asked us a question, and we answered it as we should. I recognized the customer and said, “Oh, that’s so and so.” My teammate’s response was unrepeatable. My eyes got wide, and I walked away. I called my boss and told him what was going on. This incident resulted in him handling the situation, and I felt things were looking up. Boy, I was wrong.

You know how you watch a movie, and there’s a bunch of bad things happening, it gets solved, and everyone is relieved for about 10 seconds? Then something more dramatic happens? Well, this was one of those moments. When I thought everything was going good, something else was brewing like a developing hurricane in the ocean. It caught me by surprise because I walked right into it.

To be continued…