One door closes, another door opens

As you will have probably realised from my various social media accounts, Friday marked my last day at my job at Potter Clarkson and the somewhat end of an era. I have been baking for them all for as long as I've worked there and so I figured I'd make my last one on Thursday even bigger and better than ever. With 150 people at the company, I normally only managed to make enough for my floor but this time I figured I'd try and make enough for everybody! Which obviously resulted in having way more than I could humanly carry, so I had to get my mum to drop me off at the office and help me carry my many boxes upstairs. I'd made red velvet cake pops (made by baking a red velvet cake as normal, crumbling the mixture, adding a few spoons of frosting until it sticks together, forming in to balls and then covering in melted chocolate), vanilla cheesecake (recipe here) topped with curly wurly chunks, watermelon cupcakes (in design, not in flavour), pick and mix cupcakes, and lotus biscoff blondies (recipe here). It's safe to say it all went down a treat and everything was gone by lunchtime, with the discussion up for grabs as to who would take up baking duties after I'd gone.

Friday was cuter than I could've imagined. I walked in to my desk covered in balloons and banners, with Joe having made me another Je'nni picture that was even better than the last one with our whole teams faces photoshopped on. For background info, Joe has always called me Jenné because he says I'm exactly like Ja'mie private school girl and I hate to admit that he's very right. Dalal had also baked me a red velvet cake (which is my favourite) and I was a big fan of the fact she'd added pink glitter as decoration - very me. We also ended up with a super cute picnic lunch that we ate outside because the weather was lovely. I won't be going in to the how and why of my decision to leave in this post but I already spoke about it in my fate blogpost so if you want the background information you can read it here!

Then at about 4 o'clock, people started to come downstairs and loiter around my desk so I knew it was time for me to be ambushed by my leaving presentation! I'm not normally a shy person but even I felt kind of nervous as loads of people crowded in a semi-circle around my desk. But it couldn't have been lovelier. When I first started, it was a completely new team so it was just Susannah and I for the first 6  weeks or so (before Joe joined us) and we've always worked really together. Her speech was really lovely and made me feel pretty nostalgic about the last almost-two-years that I've had there. I've had some really funny times including a lot of team inside jokes and tasks like shipping 400 boxes of chocolates to Barcelona. It was really cute when Susannah thanked me for all my hard work and said how good I've been and I looked round the group to see lots of nodding heads - it's nice to feel like I'll really be missed! And then I was presented with my gifts to find I'd been totally spoilt. When people leave, everyone from the business chips in and then the persons team decides what to get and my team had done me proud in their choices. They got me a beautiful Olivia Burton queen bee bracelet (my favourite jewellery brand and bees are my thing), a magnetic phone mount for my car (useful since I'll now be driving to my new job), a super pretty bottle of pink gin plus tonic, and a £40 use-it-in-loads-of-shops gift card! They obviously know me very well.

Then after signing out for the very last time and handing my pass in at reception, I headed straight to the pub (of course). I was really pleased with how many people turned up (about 30), especially since I had so inconsiderately landed my leaving date on the last working day before payday. We had such a laugh as always (playing shag marry kill amongst chatting about other things) and ended up out drinking cocktails until about 11. The hangover on Saturday was definitely worth it and I feel so lucky to have worked in such a great place. Obviously I've had my frustrations and challenges while working there and the need to progress and further my career has ended up in me leaving, but I honestly wouldn't change a thing about my time at Potter Clarkson. To say I started as a temp, I feel pretty proud to have lasted almost 2 years (I was just too good to let go you see) and not only have I learned a lot about the industry, but I've also had the chance to push myself and prove what I can do. I've made the best of friends with my team and my boss, and we've had the funniest times together, both at work and outside of it. I started there as a 20 year old going in to her first full-time office job and I'm leaving as a driven 22 year old with a long and successful career ahead of her (I hope). My next stop is as Content Marketing Manager at Snizl, where I start tomorrow. Thank you for everything Potter Clarkson, it's been a blast and I can't thank you enough for all the opportunities and all the memories. If I ever need a patent or a trade mark, I know where I'll be going for it!