I was looking forward to this past week. Like most weeks, I’m passed off to a new team to learn new things. But this time, I was headed back to macaron land and a team I enjoyed. But by the end of the week, I was gradually learning that it’s not a good idea to be a thinking, feeling individual.

One of the rules at the pastry shop is we all must use vous instead of tu when addressing a colleague. For those of you who speak French, you know that vous is the formal version of you; tu is informal. For those of you who didn’t know, well, now you do. Using vous conveys a sign of respect. It’s often used with people you don’t know, people in a position of authority, or with elders. Using tu is more casual and implies a level of closeness or even intimacy. After addressing someone I work with as tu, I was immediately corrected and told never to use the informal form. While I respect and understand that the environment in which we work is very formal and serious, I don’t understand why some people can use tu and others, like me, cannot. In addition to being polite, vous also creates a separation between you and the other person. It’s like a protective wall has been put up to avoid anyone getting too close. I guess because I’m not French that I don’t quite get it. But that’s okay. I’ll use vous from now on.

Another rule is joking, laughing and talking are discouraged. Perfection requires silence, unless of course I have a question. When I laugh out loud, I get disproving glances thrown my way. I have a ready and easy smile, so to hide that is like hiding a piece of myself. But I am here to work, not to enjoy myself.

Then there’s Ben. One of the chefs who gets to wear a chefs jacket bearing his name and the name of the pastry shop, he’s important. He loves to point out when I’m doing wrong and seems to delight in catching me making mistakes. Although he works with the morning team and not the macaron team, he often hangs around after his shift to supervise what we’re doing. At first I was appreciative of his “pointers,” but after a while I felt like he was just waiting for me to do something wrong. His eagle eye backfired this week though. He thought he had caught me doing something wrong: I didn’t unplug the massive hand-held blender when I set it on the table after use. But it turns out he was wrong and I actually did unplug it. Instead of saying he was wrong, he told me that this time I was lucky. Lucky?? I think smart is more like it. But I kept my mouth shut.

The final straw came when we met with a challenging situation. For the ispahan macaron, we place a small square of raspberry jelly on one half of the macaron and a blob of litche-flavored ganache on the other. The two halves of the macaron are put together so the jelly pushes down into the ganache and is only revealed once you take a bite. But someone made a mistake with the jelly and instead of being firm, it was soft and squishy. This meant that as we closed each macaron, the jelly squished out over the sides instead of getting buried in the ganache. It was a mess and I wondered how we could possibly sell macarons that looked like this.

I suddenly came up with an idea. Why not pipe the ganache directly on to the jelly and then close the macaron with the second half? This would prevent the jelly going everywhere and solve our problem. But when I suggested this to the team, they looked at me in disbelief. Although I didn’t catch everything they said, I was told that I am here to work, not to think. There are other people who are paid to think, and I shouldn’t try to change a technique. Hear that, I was struck dumb. It was just a suggestion I thought might work. I wasn’t suggestion that we change our whole operation. But obviously that doesn’t matter here.

As I mindlessly closed several thousand macarons, it dawned on me that it would be better if I was a robot. If I didn’t have feelings, emotions, or didn’t care about people liking me, I wouldn’t have so many problems. Now I’m not sure if I can actually do this, but next week I’m putting it to the test. I’m going to put my head down, do my job, and not think. Perhaps that will help me get through this internship in one piece.

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