A few weeks ago, my former employer, Z, called me to assist them with a cake project–they are caterers, and had agreed to produce something that needed more expertise than they had anticipated. I was always the resident pastry person there, and so I was naturally happy to help them out of this bind. I used one of my days off from my current job, P, to work at Z. P has a policy about taking on work that is a “conflict of interest,” but I knew it was a one time shot, and for the most part, I kept it to myself. I completed the job, and still got everything done that I needed to at P–one didn’t really affect the other, or so I thought.
This weekend was also Labor Day and my birthday. I knew P was going to be busy, so I made lots of extra cakes and worked 8 hours of overtime. I took Sunday and Monday off so that I could celebrate my birthday, feeling that I had produced as much as I could have, and that I was on par with the needs of the store. Or so I thought.
When I returned to work today, Tuesday, almost all of my cakes and pastries had sold, which I was happy about, because I could start fresh for the week. The pastry director, who comes down to help me whenever she can, was here today, and when she disappeared for a half an hour, I wondered if something was wrong, but didn’t give it much of a thought. Turns out she was discussing my work with Z with the higher-ups at P, and I was getting written up for it. Fair enough–I had violated the policy. The problem was that the wrong accusations were flying. They were trying to say that I should have put the energy that I used at Z into P, and that I was wrong to take a day off when we were running out of product. But we didn’t run out until Monday, a day I would’ve taken off anyway, because it was my Birthday.
I don’t know how I feel. I’m getting underpaid for the job that I do, I bring a lot of money to the company, and I’ve been told to keep my overtime as low as possible. If I hadn’t helped out Z, I don’t believe anything different would have come of my week at P, and yet I now have a blemish on my record, and my wrist has been repeatedly slapped for trying to keep my overtime down and eliminate unnecessary waste by producing only what I think will actually sell. And then there is my humanity–the part of me that wanted a little extra cash, the chance to see all my friends at Z for a few hours, and two days off in a row to celebrate my birthday and hang out with my boyfriend. I have long struggled with this work/personal life balance: I am a people-pleaser, and I take great pride in my work–I always want to do a good job. But at this stage in my life, I’m also realizing that fulfillment comes from people, fun, and all the things that go beyond work. In short, I feel that P put some pretty high expectations on me, and that I should’ve have just kept my mouth completely shut about the work I did at Z. But I’m also not a liar, and I had such a great day there that I wanted to share it. Stupid, stupid.
Does a company even have a right to impose these rules on their employees? Shouldn’t one be able to do what one wants in their free time, especially if their work is creative? I’m not really sure. It’s not as though I’m this super-star pastry chef who is making tons of money but is trying to build my fame and be greedy. Are doctors only allowed to work at one hospital or clinic at a time? Are artists only allowed to design for one brand? Should chefs only be allowed to work in one kitchen? I remember having a professor who taught at both Harvard and Boston University, and no one seemed to think that was wrong.
The pastry director said she turned me in because she feared that I would keep taking on extra jobs, and that I would fail to put in the hours necessary at P to get through the busy holiday season ahead. This thought never crossed my mind, and seems like it could’ve been handled by just asking me, especially since we are friends, and I would have been honest and told her hell no, that my job is stressful enough, and that I only did this as a one-time favor and had no more cake conspiracies planned. But we live and work in a world where everyone is out for themselves, me included. You either have to play by the rules, watch your back, or in some cases, both.
