Fluffy is leaving the cafe. There have been many, many times over the past four years when I've fantasized just such a scenario, although they usually involved her deciding to chuck in the whole thing and go run a salsa camp or the federal chintz lobby. Her reasons were murky, but any will do, really (I believe she'll be joining the "distribution" side of the "industry," like Sysco or Van Eerden). I might have had mixed feelings about it at one point (I do have mixed feelings about outlasting her). She taught me a fair amount of what I now know about cooking and seemed a good boss at first, but too, too many days of being treated like I was in preschool have really leached away the sympathy, as had her increasing shiftiness and forgotten promises vis-a-vis the staff. We've known about this for a month or so, but were sworn to semi-secrecy due to the effect the revelation might have on business. I wondered about this, whether she thought the offices of downtown Ann Arbor would be swept by a rash of suicides at the possible interruption of pastry sales, but respected (for the most part) her wishes. Now that it's really happening, I feel slightly giddy.

I still don't plan to stay there very much longer, but my own departure will, I hope, have little to do with the actual work environment. I was afraid my work would keep getting more and more miserable (my best friend there was dropped from the schedule and now no longer works there, a common weasel tactic among modern bosses to avoid unemployment paperwork after firing their workers) until Fluffy would decide to try and get rid of me (a similar situation, I suspect, led to my axing a decade ago at Barnes and Noble in Baton Rouge). I wanted to quit first, and still might, but this takes a lot of potentially unpleasant pressure off me. Our new manager seems a pleasant enough fellow (while he apparently had a lot to do with my friend's "leaving," I suspect Fluffy was rather more to blame) and his administrative style has already been rather encouraging (although (a)there's nowhere to go but up and (b) there have been an inevitable number of minor cockups, the blame for many of which can belaid at the door of the cutesy hipster-magnet coffeeshop down the street which we sell quiches and sandwiches), so at this point I'm cautiously optimistic. I still need to switch jobs at some point this year, but at least I might be able to leave on a high note now.