Hello lovelies! Been too long, I do
apologize & I am going to work harder to shorten intervals between posts.
This month has been one of mixed emotions.
On the one hand, I was blessed in so many ways, I received so many orders &
such beautiful, supportive messages from new & regular clients & fellow
bakers. Then in the last two weeks, it just felt like one wrong turn after
another.
At our new place, the neighbors are
bordering on harassment because it seems like they have a problem with my dogs.
To the point that the dogs were accused of breaking down 2 slabs of precast of
a solid wall which we had to fix even though photos confirm that the
workmanship & condition is faulty. It was a week & a bit of constant
anxiety & stress & no sense, so I eventually just fixed it & closed
all view into the yard space so everyone would be happy in their own space. My
peace & happiness was restored, who knew it would be so short lived.
Last week on Tuesday evening I received a
message from a client expressing in point form & detail all the ways u
could’ve done a better job creatively on her cake. She also said that she found
a hair in the cake, no picture or returned defective product to substantiate
this. I’m not sure why there was a delay with sending the complaint between
Sunday morning when it was delivered to Tuesday evening when it was sent in.
Anyhoo, if you know me, you’ll know I am my worst critic & I deconstruct even
my best work down to being “not that great” – it’s the worst part of me &
I’ve come along way with healing but it’s still there. I responded
professionally explaining how bakers are different people & cakes cannot be
matched 100% to pictures supplied due to the variations in products, colours
& tools between countries & this is clearly stated on my invoice too. I
was really worried by the hair comment, so I offered a full refund. Can you
imagine how I felt after reading the message? I was completely distraught, I
didn’t sleep for the rest of the week & I was distracted at work, the words
constantly replaying in my mind reminding me of what a failure I am. With only
R12 in my account, I was hoping for extra orders to cover the R1200 refund, but
they never came. I was grateful that I could move some funds from my sch fee
payment to this refund just to get this horrible ordeal closed. I felt much
better after doing it but when speaking to a few friends, they had said that I
handled it the wrong way.
On Friday we had our wellness day at work
& a team supper scheduled. We are so critically busy this month, so we
frantically tried the entire day to push the work out. As we were leaving, an
older lady came & started screaming unprofessionally how we are taking the
team to have a nice time while they have made so many errors. Gosh this really
took it out of me, I was fighting off the tears & I sat back down with them
& continued working. My manager contacted me a little while later to say
that we should leave & go enjoy & she would fix whichever errors arose.
It’s just amazing how the world consists of so many miserable people constantly
stealing people’s peace & only a handful who strive to restore it.
The weekend hasn’t been great either, more
miserable people trying to steal my peace. How did the world become like this?
Not even the feeling I got from the church service could protect me from the
misery out there. Where is the love?
If you are the type of person who is a
peace stealer, I hope you can identify that this is really not a good trait. If
you are reading this – my hope for you is to tackle whatever demons have made
you this way & learn to show kindness wherever you go. If you can choose to
be anything in a world of hurting people – choose to be kind!
I have posted a reel on my Instagram page
@lauren_bikhani of things you can do to pull yourself out of feeling like a
failure by someone else’s actions or comments so be sure to visit it if you
have had a similar experience. Also please comment on this blog post if you
would like to share a similar experience, I think the more we see that we are
not alone in this struggle, the better & stronger we will feel.
Until next time………… remember to bake
someone happy!
