I helped my brother at his pastry store for the past 3 days and finally made it through. To be honest, it was the scariest business situation I have ever experienced. It was on the verge of operational collapse. Let’s talk about it.
My experience on December 24th
December 24th would be the busiest day for pastry stores. In my region, people buy chicken and strawberry shortcake and celebrate Christmas. My brother’s pastry shop also received a large number of reservations.
However, the situation was terrifying. Not a single shortcake had been prepared for the day. Although other minor cakes for reservation, like ganache cake and cheesecake, were prepared in the freezer, they had run out of the most popular shortcakes. Shortcake accounts for 90% of the reservations.
In other words, the staff had to prepare the reservation on the same day. It was a crazy situation.
There were countless other unbelievable situations as well. They didn’t arrange any traffic guidance. If many customers arrived and caused traffic jams on the road, the police would come and order the shop to regulate vehicles, even if there was no room for extra staff. Making customers wait longer increases that risk.
They were severely short-staffed. Each staff member had their unique part, so it was a situation where they could not afford to lose a single staff member to satisfy the reservations.
There was a significant risk: many reservations would fail if even one person was missing. It was enough to ruin the store’s reputation.
The management failure
It was no longer management. Even though my brother was the manager, he was no longer fulfilling that role.
Both the sales line and the production line were in chaos. The materials, such as boxes and trays, were not all sufficiently prepared. My brother only put the ingredients in the fridge, the freezer, and the warehouse randomly. Nothing had been categorized.
Naturally, the staff was in complete chaos. The pastry chef hired for the day spent tens of minutes looking multiple times for the tray in the warehouse. Since my brother didn’t organize the warehouse, it was messy. Even he didn’t know where the trays were. The cake decorator could not locate the ingredients and ended up searching all over the refrigerator multiple times. The wrapping staff entered the warehouse many times and searched for cake boxes.
Among them, my brother was counting how many cakes the staff needed to make on that day. He spent hours on it. In other words, he didn’t even know the number of orders.
He was using the fact that the register he relied on for many years broke a month ago as an excuse. However, he continued accepting reservations without tracking the figures and stored the materials in the warehouse haphazardly. Every time a customer with a special pre-order came, he said, ‘I forgot about that!’ and started making it while keeping the customer waiting. A long line started forming at the store.
By the afternoon on the 24th, he was completely confused. He scratched his head, not knowing what to do.
In other words, he failed his management. He was unsuitable for a manager.
A miracle and a doubt
It was just a miracle that we managed to produce and sell every single pre-order. If even one person, including me, were missing, the entire operation would have fallen apart.
Since the staff could not rely on my brother, each staff member had to make their own decisions. His young daughter, who is still a student, operated the selling part, while I decided the production priorities. Fortunately, since it was only shortcakes, I managed somehow. Considering the situation, it was a miracle.
However, I never want to experience a situation like that again. That was no longer management. Although it was exciting on that day, it could easily be a traumatic experience if something went wrong, even slightly. It was fine because I succeeded, but that night, I felt terrified at the quite large possibility of failure.
I still don’t know if helping my brother was the right decision. It may have been better to let him fail at that point. On the 25th, he laughed at the chaos of the 24th and didn’t reflect on it. From my perspective, the collapse of that store is inevitable. The fundamental problem is based on his personality.
Perhaps it will be the realm of philosophy. Try asking ourselves: is it unworthy of doing if it will be meaningless someday? If we choose yes, everything will eventually become meaningless. If we choose no, we need some other judgment.
I will make decisions based on my empathy and logical reasoning. I am considering it now.
Conclusion
Anyway, I made it through these three days, although they were terrifying.
I will continue to try various activities in society for a little while longer.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
