Jack of all Trades or Master of One?

[JellyPooga]

I have come upon a dilemma in my life and a fairly crucial one at that, which may well decide the rest of my life.

First a little background; before this year past, I was the typical British Student/Bum...went to school, got GCSE's, went to college, got A-Levels, went to University, spent far too long there and eventually dropped out. I then spent a year or so after that looking for work with little success. That brings us up to about a year ago. I had no work experience, no degree to show for 5 years at Uni and only mediocre (by my reckoning anyway) A-Levels.

I then got a part-time job at a restaurant, but that went kaput as the restaurant closed only a couple of months after I had been there (and no, the closure wasn't anything to do with me :smallsigh:). After another couple of months generally bumming around and looking for more work, I found this job at a bakery...apprentice position, no previous experience neccesary, initial pay fairly crap, but with good prospects of pay rise(es) within a short time...sounded good to me; I'd always kinda liked the idea of being a baker anyway, so I went for it and got the position.

That was just over three months ago. I'd subsumed the duties of the other apprentice who'd started a week or so before me within a fortnight. I got my first pay rise within a month and had replaced the guy who was technically supposed to be training me within two (along with another pay increase). Needless to say, I picked the job up quickly. At that point, stuff started going pear shaped. As the weather turned colder, I struggled to adapt to it (the thing about bread is that it doesn't rise when it's cold, see, so you have to compensate for it, but I couldn't and still can't seem to compensate enough) and then I started making silly little mistakes that had much bigger knock-on effects (like accidentally using too little salt in a mix ruining a whole batch of bread).

It doesn't seem to matter what I do, stuff just won't go right. I've had two official warnings and three strikes means I'm out, so I'm on a thin tether right now. I like the job, despite the beastly unsocial hours and horrendous pay (even after two raises), but that's where my dilemma comes in...

I've been given the rather charitable offer of a certain degree of leniancy, so long as I really want to learn the trade and be a baker. I would like to learn the trade and having a steady job and an income is a pleasant change from the poverty of being a student/unemployed. However, I am also a man that thrives on change. It took me two years at Uni to decide what degree I wanted to do before I settled on one. Even then I got bored after a while and ended up flunking it because I was interested in something else.

So here is my dilemma: stick at the baking trade and be a baker until zompocalypse happens (which it will, mark my words!)...OR...accept that either I'm not "baker material" or that my subconscious has it in for me and is pushing me to move on by making me make mistakes and quit the bakery and go look for another job (for some reason, becoming a librarian is proving to be a tasty morsel on my "what jobs could I do instead" palette...).

If I choose the former, I pretty much pidgeon-hole myself in the baking trade until I'm forced out...which is a terrifying concept for me (i.e. doing one thing for the rest of my life), but the most financially and "respect"fully viable.

If I choose the latter, I force myself into perpetual job-hunting, always on the lookout for something new. I'll probably never get a good wage, always struggle to impress potential new employers ("why did you leave your last job after only 3 months?" "'cos I was bored" doesn't sound too good really does it?) and possibly be forced to move house a lot. On the plus side though, I'll have a wide range of experience, I won't be tied down and will have a lot of freedom to do as I will.

So there it is. I was just wondering if any of you Playgrounders out there had any advice or if anyone has had a similar experience that might shed some light on either path. Any help would be appreciated!

[bosssmiley]

Anyone can have a run of bad luck (ask me about my "days when life hates me" sometime :smallamused: ). Just let the boss see you're learning from your mistakes and, FTLOG, don't repeat them.

As for sticking/moving. Unless you've got something specific to move on to (like setting up a start-up, or moving directly into an open position with your name on it) sticking where you are and putting the work in is always a good move. Show willing and take all the training they can give you (more skills and seniority = more delicious £££s for you). Bake for as long as it's what you want to do. When, maybe a few years on, you feel the time has come to move on, move on.

Just do the best you can at whatever you're doing right now. Change'll be along to ruin your peace of mind and move you in directions you never imagined soon enough. :smallwink:

[dish]

You seem to have made a good impression on the management what with the promotions and leniency. It also seems that you do like baking, so I say you should stay with them.
This doesn't mean that you will always be a baker - I'm sure I've read that the average person will change careers four or five times during their working life - but you should give baking a decent try (probably several years and some qualifications). Be honest with your manager about the difficulties you're having, but keep on trying to do your best.
Does the company have a scheme that'll help you to get recognised qualifications in baking (City & Guilds, maybe)?

[JellyPooga]

My head agrees with the both of you...sticking at it for at least a year or two is the sensible option...but on the flipside, I keep thinking about how I'd enjoy fixing cars or designing games or cataloguing books etc. so much more than what I'm doing now and none of those jobs have this problem or that and so on and so forth. The most likely reason I'm making all these silly mistakes is that my head thinks it's in a library or workshop when it should be thinking 'bread'! Stupid, I know, but I find it hard to concentrate on one thing for very long, so I keep getting distracted and run on auto-pilot while I think about something else...which, as everyone knows (and I keep finding out), is not a good idea if small mistakes equal big consequences.

The bakery I work at is only small...apart from me (the bread guy), there's one other (the buns guy), the boss (the cakes guy) and the girls (who run/serve the counter/shop). As far as I understand, I won't be getting any formal qualifications from working there, only experience, but apparantly (though I've my suspicions that it's only a cop-out intended to a)save company funds and b)reduce potential 'down-time' from actually working) in the baking trade a good referance and experience count for far more than any qualification you could get in the UK.

[Faceist]

You sound like the kind of person who'd be having these kind of doubts irrespective of your career. Most jobs are hard starting out, it's rare to find one you're instantly good at and like enough to stick with, and if you chose to swap to designing video games/working in a library/whatever everything wouldn't suddenly magically slot into place, you'd still be encountering troubles and tribulations and challenges. That's the nature of life. If you're really unhappy in the bakery, tender your resignation, but it sounds more like transient doubts, so I'd advise you to stick at it and see how you feel in a few months. It's not like you can't change jobs down the road, after all!

[Jimorian]

I agree with sticking it out for a lot of the reasons already stated.

There's also one other important factor. If you can stick around and really learn that trade, that's the ability that will stick with you. Just like the most important thing about a university degree is the "proof" that you learned how to learn, doing the same with something like baking provides the same kind of help later. Both for your own confidence in being able to do it, and for future employers looking at your resume/CV, even if it's a totally unrelated field.

Once you get a couple of jobs under your belt, you'll generally find that the fact that you didn't graduate university will become a diminishing factor in most future prospects (there will always be those annoying exceptions, but if you really want to later, you can always go back or at least do an online degree to satisfy a lot of place).

Good luck!

[Fri]

Now you make me want to work in a bakery, damn.

[Grail]

basing life decisions on the advice of internet forum posters is not a smart thing to do and is asking for trouble. you should talk to people who's opinions will actually matter... namely family, friends and even your boss. who is to say what actual experience people on here actually have, how old they are and under what influence they might be when posting. They also have no regard for you other than an annonymous name, rather than someone they might actually care about.

[JellyPooga]

basing life decisions on the advice of internet forum posters is not a smart thing to do and is asking for trouble. you should talk to people who's opinions will actually matter... namely family, friends and even your boss. who is to say what actual experience people on here actually have, how old they are and under what influence they might be when posting. They also have no regard for you other than an annonymous name, rather than someone they might actually care about.

What you say is true, I know. If I were to actually base my decision on anyone elses opinion or advice, I certainly wouldn't base it on anything I'd read on the internet, full stop, let alone a forum. However, in the spirit of just needing to vent my worries to an anonymous crowd of people who will more than likely tell me what I've already made my mind up about and/or take the piss, I decided to use this forum. In a way, you could think of it as a very subtle form of self-manipulation.

Please don't think me an eejit (though I am a silly person!)...I make up my own mind about everything and it's a rare occurence that someone can sway me from my course. Having said that, sometimes a guy just needs a little confirmation or reassurance that he's doing the right thing or made the right choice...talking to someone involved in my life would only make them concerned...talking to the Playground is essentially entertainment.

@Faceist: Yep, you're totally right. Whatever job I do I'd have the same issues that I'm having now (more than likely).

@Jimor: Yeah, I kinda figured that the whole flunking Uni thing would fade into obscurity eventually, but at the moment, it's been such an albatross in the past couple of years that it's sometimes hard to imagine! I would like to go back at some point and finish (or restart) my degree, but not yet...

@Fri: Working at a bakery is kinda cool; free bread 'till it's coming out of your ears, it smells good every day (gotta love fresh-baked-bread smell!) and it practically counts as free membership to a gym + a daily workout (seriously, I've put on more muscle tone after working at this bakery for three months than I did going down the gym every day for a year!). On the downside though, pay is crap, you work when everyone else is either partying or asleep, hours are long with few breaks (there's just not the time/chance for long or frequent breaks) and you have to sleep when it's daylight.

Anyways, thanks guys, you told me what I wanted to hear! :smallwink:

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

Here's an interesting proposition for you. You seem to like the baking/food thing, so why not try your hand at culinary/pastry school. There are usually programs that aren't terribly long, and that would easily lead to better pay. You can probably even work something out while still working at the bakery.

[Telonius]

My (probably typically American) advice ... if either you love it or you're learning something while you're there (or both), stay there. But if you don't love it and you aren't learning anything, it's not worth your time.

[thubby]

be honest with your employer. just tell him that you like your job but that you aren't sure it's what you want to do with the rest of your life.
finding out what interests you is what your supposed to be doing right now, take advantage.

oh, and you're supposed to say you left because the work didn't suit you. or that it wasn't the job for you.

[Grail]

Please don't think me an eejit (though I am a silly person!)...I make up my own mind about everything and it's a rare occurence that someone can sway me from my course. Having said that, sometimes a guy just needs a little confirmation or reassurance that he's doing the right thing or made the right choice...talking to someone involved in my life would only make them concerned...talking to the Playground is essentially entertainment.


sure, problem is nowadays a lot of people (especially younguns) get confused by the sparkles & glitter of the net and do use it for making life decisions. So I don't consider you an eejit, just an eej. :smallsmile:

[Z-dan]

This is reminding me a little of myself... I finished school with pretty high grades, went on to college and got average grades, wanted to go to uni but for various reasons I got held back and tried to find a job instead... took me moving to Leicester after a year or so to finally get a job because of my lack of experience, and even then I was just working on a production line in a food factory. I impressed the higher-ups, but after about a year I decided I couldn't cope with the horrendous conditions so handed in my notice and started looking elsewhere. I then found a job through an agency in a factory that made rubber seals for cars as a quality inspector- it's higher up from a production line and better paid, and its a job- so why not? I went for that, stayed a few months, then got laid off because of this recession >.> Now I'm close to getting a much larger boost and becoming a data technician for a place that deals with building materials, and I'm told they're some of the best respected computer users in the area- if I don't stick at that then I'll hopefully get something similar and higher up and it might even gradually lead to me getting a job in archiving which would be ideal.
Anyway, the point to this story is that I started on a production line in a food factory- you don't get much lower than that- and now I could well become a data technician in a place that ships gravel. That's an increase from £9k to £16k in 3 years, and I'm moving diagonally into other career paths at the same time. So my penultimate point is that if you stay as a baker it could well allow you to sidestep into another career without losing, or possibly even gaining, more money- and my ultimate point is that with this recession/credit crunch it'll be difficult finding a new job so search whilst on the job if you do want a change.

Phew. I ramble too much :smalleek:

[Serpentine]

basing life decisions on the advice of internet forum posters is not a smart thing to do and is asking for trouble. you should talk to people who's opinions will actually matter... namely family, friends and even your boss. who is to say what actual experience people on here actually have, how old they are and under what influence they might be when posting. They also have no regard for you other than an annonymous name, rather than someone they might actually care about.I resent the implication that I couldn't give a rat's arse about ol' Jolly Puggles, and that my opinions don't matter :smallannoyed: The internet is a resource, and the people on it offer a far wider range of experiences than one's immediate associates. If anyone acts on any advice blindly, regardless of the source, then they are an idjeet, but not just for listening to and considering it.

So, here's mine: I can really sympathize with your attitude, which is why I'm already aiming for a job that entails a variety of topics (so far my only ideas are museums and TV). I recommend that you stick with it for now, and follow your other interests as hobbies. To take your own examples, restore a car, teach yourself (or take a class in) programming, volunteer in a local library (it's how I got my jobs :smallwink:): If it turns out you really like, and are good at, one of these side interests, then you can pursue it as a career in earnest. In the meantime, you're gaining a stable income and catering to your itchy feet.
Helpful?

[Grail]

Resent it all you want. You are however (unless you know him in person) insignificant. Your opinions don't matter. There is no validation of your legitimacy to make comment or appraise his situation.

Anyone who thinks different is deluding themselves. The internet is a resource, yes. But not for making decisions based upon the self-styled counselling of unknown entities.

The OP has stated that they were just shooting the breeze, venting as it were. That's cool, and is to be expected I guess.

Personally, I don't really care too much one way or the other what happens to him. This doesn't make me a bad person, and I never insinuated that others on the forum are bad either. I have no emotional investment in anyone on here, and i doubt seriously whether others have true emotional investment either.

I'm another of the unknown quantities. But in saying that I deliberately steered clear of trying to advise him on the question he was actually asking, not because i cared, but merely because I could. I've been around a long time. I know that forums are full of people who like to talk big of themselves, claim that they are this or that. Most of them, especially on forums such as this are students, unemployed, or bums. Some have life experience, some may even actually be counsellors. But nobody really knows.

As to whether people on here truly care for the others, well i find that hard to believe. Forums like this one are generally posted to as part of a fad. Members come and go. Some will stay for a longer period of time than others, but in all the time that I've been visiting forums and posting online for the various things that i'm interested in, there are very few original posters still around. Hell, I've come and gone from many as my interests fade, wane or simply change.

So, in short, find resentment if you will. At the end of the day it doesn't matter coz you are just an annonymous name, and that's all I am to you.

Long live annonymity. Where a 49 year old, unemployed bum of a man can be a 14 year old fairy princess and nobody is any wiser.

And no, I'm not 49, unemployed or a bum.

Or am I?

[Serpentine]

Nope. You're much more than an "anonymous name" to me. Much of what you are to me would probably be skirting the edge of the forum rules (though I wouldn't mean them to be insulting), but you are a fairly unpleasant, cynical internet-person (who lives just a few hours away from me, assuming you're telling the truth in your location) who apparently not only refuses to give any useful advice but moreover discourages anyone else from even trying to help lest they draw your heartless ire, and who also seems to completely miss the point of this forum, its society and human camaraderie. So, no, you're not just an "anonymous name" to me. Maybe they're not entirely accurate, but I can still make deductions about your personality and out-of-internet identity nonetheless. And, yep, I do have some emotional investment in you, though of course not as much as someone I can hold in my own arms, or even one of the real friends I have made solely through this digital medium. If you came on here with a problem, I would genuinely hope that this problem is solved for you. Hell, if I really disliked you I might secretly wish that it not be and that you were thus inconvenienced - still emotional investment. I do genuinely hope that Pooga's problem is solved for him.

Good advice is good advice, and can generally be easily detected as such. So what if it's said by an unemployed, uneducated 49-year-old bum who's claiming to be a 14 year old fairy princess? Unless he's saying "do this, then this, then call this number, then fill in this form and send it to PO BOX whatever", his advice will still be good or bad and observable as such. My advice is given in earnest. I am a student; I'm a 22 year old human female (born with the bits an' all); I'm working two part-time jobs in two libraries; I hope to get into honours this year; I'm afraid that my own indecision and lack of any distinct skill is going to hobble any chances of my finding a job I will be satisfied in; I have an extreme lack of worldly experience despite my desire to try a great variety of things and go many places, at least partly due to my fear of actually doing such things. Believe that or not, it really doesn't matter. I'm probably not qualified to offer advice - in fact, Pooga is already bounds ahead of me in terms of experience and qualification (even if he did drop out of uni). Nevertheless, my advice is there. It may be helpful, or it may not. The fact that it comes from an anonymous, illegitimate, insignificant, emotionless unknown entity (and I would hope that my history here would mitigate this at least somewhat...) has absolutely no real bearing its quality.
Incidentally, if you really believe that, go tell it to the Relationships and Depression threads. Check out the lack of emotional investment, and insignificance of the advice, and unreliability of the experience. Hell, if you really think people on the internet are all lying, insignificant emotionless anonymous entities, go talk to all the people who are getting, or have been, married who met here.

Puggles, you have my thoughts on your situation. Really, whatever you decide to do will have its risks, downsides and benefits. I don't need to be a 22 year old student, or a 49 year old bum, or a 30 year old businesswoman to know that.

[JellyPooga]

So, here's mine: I can really sympathize with your attitude, which is why I'm already aiming for a job that entails a variety of topics (so far my only ideas are museums and TV). I recommend that you stick with it for now, and follow your other interests as hobbies. To take your own examples, restore a car, teach yourself (or take a class in) programming, volunteer in a local library (it's how I got my jobs :smallwink:): If it turns out you really like, and are good at, one of these side interests, then you can pursue it as a career in earnest. In the meantime, you're gaining a stable income and catering to your itchy feet.
Helpful?

The thought had crossed my mind, I must admit, but it's finding the time for all the things I want to do! I work 6 days a week and the other day I mostly spend vegging out from exhaustion or visiting the folks and/or friends...it doesn't leave me an awful lot of time for hobbies. I guess you have to make time though (does anyone else think about physically sitting down and crafting time from the ether or something when someone says that? or is that just me?). In answer to your closing question; yes, the advice is helpful, I'd honestly not thought about the application of pursuing an interest to the potential job scene related to it. I only thought of doing the activity as either a hobby or a job...not a hobby with a mind to make it a job (potentially). Does that make sense? It does in my mind, but that says nothing for actual clarity to anyone else!

As a side, I don't think anyone has ever given me a nickname based on my username before! I kinda like it....Jolly Puggles, tee hee...that's tickled me :smallbiggrin:

P.S. I don't know why, but I'd always figured you to be a couple of years older than 22, maybe the same age or a year or two older than I am, Serp. You live and learn *shrugs*

P.P.S. You make a good point about peeps on the 'net...good advice is good advice, regardless of its source. I hadn't thought of it that way before...probably got something to do with the way I was raised to trust firm handshakes and meaningful looks that you just can't get over the tubes!

[Jimorian]

What Serpentine said and then some. I've yet to see anybody really successfully represent themselves other than as they are. And I don't mean as a collection of "facts" about themselves, but their character. Kind people are kind, mean people are mean, warm are warm, and cold are cold.

What you get when you ask for advice on a forum like this is a range of perspectives; it's still up to the person to pick and choose which will work in their situation, or even to find another way after weighing the options given. The fact that so many people here are willing to help out really says a lot about the community here.

I have online friends all over the world, and I've been graced with the opportunity to meet many of them in person, and it's like continuing conversations online into meatspace. I'm sure it's been the same for anybody here who's gone to the various GITP meetups.

Anyway, that's my perspective on this as well. What you see is what you get, and I know what I've seen. :smalltongue:

[Moff Chumley]

I've made friends on this forum that I talk to every day. I've received advice on this forum that, source aside, has changed my life. I've had more coherent, intelligent conversations than I could've in real life, and I mean that in an extreme manner. I've been on this forum for over a year and a half, and there are many who've been here longer. (Like Serps.)

Also, a note on cynicism: It's easy and it makes you sound smart, but it gets boring quickly as hell and only truly impresses shallow people. I find blind optimism is far more interesting.

[JellyPooga]

Apparantly, what I consider a 'strike' is not the same as what my boss thinks. By this time tomorrow I could be officially one or two weeks notice away from being unemployed. I managed to make a really minor mistake today at work (we're talking small fry here; I wasted 10lb. of white flour because I was having one of those days where nothing goes right...for reference, a normal sized mix, of which I do 2 every day, is 85lb. and that's just the white, let alone the brown, wholemeal, granary and Hovis breads...on a busy day, which seems to be almost every day, I'll use somewhere in the region of 120lb. of white in 1 mix, twice a day...that's 240lb. of white flour every day and this guy's worried about 10lb.) and now I have a discipliniary tomorrow. Hey ho, so much for the "stick at your job cos it's a better idea than haring off to find a completely different one" idea, huh?

To be honest, I think that my boss has been looking to fire me for a few weeks now, ever since stuff started going wrong. He's not the most forgiving of people and if you screw up once, he'll make up his mind that you're useless there and then and no matter what you do, he won't change his mind. The fact that I've continued making mistakes hasn't helped, but the fact that he's willing to hold a discipliniary over such a minor thing just proves what I've suspected.

All told, though, if I do lose my job over this, I won't be too disapointed; you play the hand you're dealt and if the fates have decided that I'm not to be a baker, who am I to disagree? I was thinking of jacking it in anyways, so it's no big. The only annoying thing about it is that I'll have to go find another job and I really hate job hunting...it's far too much effort and you have to talk to people and try to impress them and everything...it's pissing annoying.

Anyway, I think I'm going to have a drink. At least I don't have to go into work tonight because of this...

[Solaris]

My (probably typically American) advice ... if either you love it or you're learning something while you're there (or both), stay there. But if you don't love it and you aren't learning anything, it's not worth your time.
And my (probably typically American) advice... Work until you die.
No, seriously.
You will work until you die. That is the long and short of it. It's a bloody shame you've lost your job at the bakery, but you're going to have to find another one.
And you'll probably get bored with it. I know I got bored with my job at the Wendy's, and I made the mistake of quitting when I didn't have another job waiting for me. To cut the story to the quick, I wound up choosing between the Army and being homeless. I've gotten bored with some things in the Army, but the job changes pretty frequently so I'm happy. Unless you go into the military, I can't think of many entry-level jobs that offer that.
When you get bored with your next job, I ask you to remember how much you hate job-hunting before thinking about quitting it. Especially with the way the economy's going (from what I understand, it's sucking throughout at least the developed world), a paying job - even one that's not fun - is something to be cherished. It's a lesson everyone has to pick up sometime.

[JellyPooga]

And my (probably typically American) advice... Work until you die.
No, seriously.
You will work until you die. That is the long and short of it. It's a bloody shame you've lost your job at the bakery, but you're going to have to find another one.
And you'll probably get bored with it. I know I got bored with my job at the Wendy's, and I made the mistake of quitting when I didn't have another job waiting for me. To cut the story to the quick, I wound up choosing between the Army and being homeless. I've gotten bored with some things in the Army, but the job changes pretty frequently so I'm happy. Unless you go into the military, I can't think of many entry-level jobs that offer that.
When you get bored with your next job, I ask you to remember how much you hate job-hunting before thinking about quitting it. Especially with the way the economy's going (from what I understand, it's sucking throughout at least the developed world), a paying job - even one that's not fun - is something to be cherished. It's a lesson everyone has to pick up sometime.

It's funny that you mentioned joining the military because that's always been my back-up plan for if everything goes pear-shaped. I very nearly signed up a few years back when I was considering leaving Uni and if I hadn't got the job at the bakery, I was on the verge of doing so again. If I can't find another job within a couple of weeks or so, then I may well go with that...almost everyone I know (which includes several people who are in the military) says that it would suit me and I would tend to agree with them.

I have no illusions about early retirement or being a bum for the rest of my life; I'm well aware that, barring extraordinary circumstances, I'll have to work until the day I die (or near enough). Doesn't stop me hating job-hunting though (in fact, does anyone actually enjoy job-hunting or being on the dole? I know I couldn't stand living off of benfits for as long as I did after I left Uni...that feeling of being a leech on society was just...urgh! It makes me cringe just thinking about it).