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Original poster

To be raging at shortbread instead of pastries?

208 replies

pinotnow · 12/06/2025 09:40

I am at a conference type event. As a teacher I rarely get to come on this type of thing. I've looked forward to the pastries on arrival throughout the two hour drive. I'm here and there are no pastries. It's biscuits of a shortbread type, which I don't like anyway and are not appropriate as a substitute for pastries. I haven't eaten so it's going to be a long morning until lunch, which I now have concerns about anyway.

Why is everything so relentlessly fucking shit now?

OP posts:
BarnacleBeasley · 12/06/2025 13:19

Oh no! Can you sneak out of the afternoon session and get a coffee and a pastry?

Original poster
pinotnow · 12/06/2025 13:18

No mints or foxes fruits on the tables either, ffs

Lunch has been OK aside from a weird beef kofta thing that looked like...well, you can guess. But now there's no fucking post Lunch tea or coffee. We're going to have to wait until 2 fucking 30 ..

OP posts:
SarahAndQuack · 12/06/2025 13:14

I was so spoilt by the first conference I ever went to. Proper spread of pastries plus cheese/cooked meals, like a European-style breakfast buffet, plus bowls of cherries and fresh orange juice and so on. I don't remember all the meals but one of the lunch options one day was an enormous, absolutely delicious seafood paella, served off the massive pan it'd been cooked in so it was piping hot. I still, genuinely, want to find a restaurant that matches up to that version.

I have no idea how the hosts got the budget for it all, but it absolutely ruined me. Next time I went and was shocked by the standard limp Danish/curly-edged hame sarnie line up.

Even so, shortbread! Nope.

Newstartplease24 · 12/06/2025 12:59

I would get your ducks in a row, OP.

Newstartplease24 · 12/06/2025 12:59

I think if you look at the matter fully in context with the relevant technical advice from those with appropriate professional qualifications, you will find that there is a constructive obligation to provide pastries at conferences in the morning.

SoScarletItWas · 12/06/2025 12:55

MagpiePi · 12/06/2025 12:42

I admire your self control.

I'd arrive home and be greeted with 'Why have you brought home napkins covered in crumbs again?"

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Oh don’t put it down to self-control. Given that I’m Coeliac, there is no gluten-infested cookie or pastry that’s worth the consequences!

viques · 12/06/2025 12:51

Everydayimhuffling · 12/06/2025 09:45

That's deeply wrong OP! I'm also a teacher and there absolutely should be tiny pastries at the start of a conference. Biscuits at the tea break.

The best one I ever went to was at the Oval cricket ground, heaven knows how they got funding ( yes it was for teachers) because it was amazing.

On arrival warm freshly baked pastries and coffee

Mid morning break more fresh pastries and coffee

Lunch gorgeous buffet lunch or proper food, plus desserts

As we were leaving they were laying out another spread of afternoon tea stuff, little sandwiches and cake, they were practically begging people to stay, so some of us obligingly did and also took some of the goodies home.

If ever you get asked to a corporate at the Oval crawl on broken glass to attend.

godmum56 · 12/06/2025 12:48

pinotnow · 12/06/2025 09:44

Luckily I haven't paid and am actually being paid, otherwise storming the stage would definitely be on the cards.

I'm sure pastries on arrival were mentioned in the bumph and we definitely had them last year.

make good use of the post event feedback!

Slatterndisgrace · 12/06/2025 12:46

catgirl1976 · 12/06/2025 11:49

This has upset me. On quite a deep level.

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I’m disturbed too. I can see no logic to it.

MyKingdomForACat · 12/06/2025 12:45

Is there gin?

Pinkyplat · 12/06/2025 12:43

Wheech · 12/06/2025 11:05

Yes, if breakfast is provided I want savoury. Pastries are a thinly disguised cake, only suitable as a breakfast pudding after I've eaten a proper breakfast.

Also I prefer shortbread to pastries but the two are not interchangeable.

Everything about this thread is upsetting me. I might have to take a break from Mumsnet and do some actual work (no snacks provided).

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"breakfast pudding" 😄

You're not wrong though. Breakfast pudding needs to be more of a thing.

MagpiePi · 12/06/2025 12:42

SoScarletItWas · 12/06/2025 12:36

Me too. But I have been known to steal wrap up several cookies and pastries in a napkin and take them home for Mr Scarlet.

Bonus, we have acquired half a dozen lovely napkins this way.

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I admire your self control.

I'd arrive home and be greeted with 'Why have you brought home napkins covered in crumbs again?"

smallstitch · 12/06/2025 12:41

Are you sure some greedy buggers didn’t have several pastries and so they ran out and bunged a load of biscuits on a plate in a pathetic effort to replace them?

WearyAuldWumman · 12/06/2025 12:39

Be glad you're not in my old LA.

Latterly, we were told to tell people to bring their water bottle.

rosemarble · 12/06/2025 12:39

banivani · 12/06/2025 12:13

I am in Sweden and we have slightly different rules but yes, I join in the outrage. It's the principle of the thing. Once around 2011-2012 I was at a conference in Stockholm and there was a lovely-looking little mini dessert thing in a little cup on offer, some sort of piped white goodness and raspberries. Turns out they had been hijacked by LCHF nutters and it was pure cream cheese. I mean it's not like it's not decent fodder, but I felt I was sold a lie.

This was 13 years ago....time to let it go!

SoScarletItWas · 12/06/2025 12:38

Fusedspur · 12/06/2025 11:13

TRIGGER WARNING

I went to a network meeting where they promised bacon butties in the morning and what they actually served was bacon on ciabatta (What the fuck?) with no brown sauce. None. Nada.
Why do bad things happen to good people? They can shove it of they think I’m going there again.

My mouth dried up just reading that.

SoScarletItWas · 12/06/2025 12:36

janeandmarysmum · 12/06/2025 10:26

I'm coeliac. While all you non-coeliac people enjoy your pastries and shortbread, I have to make do with some wrapped grimness that generally tastes like cardboard.

Me too. But I have been known to steal wrap up several cookies and pastries in a napkin and take them home for Mr Scarlet.

Bonus, we have acquired half a dozen lovely napkins this way.

FlightCommanderPRJohnson · 12/06/2025 12:33

I've sometimes seen most of the pastries left uneaten at this kind of event, as 80% of people stayed over the night before and have had a hotel breakfast before leaving for the conference.

Alongthetowpath · 12/06/2025 12:32

I am furious on your behalf.

We used to have an annual staff celebration day at work.
Each department got a big hamper of brownies and pastries from a local bakery, and there was a coffee truck and an ice cream van in the car park and we all got tokens for free coffee and ice cream.

Then they decided that lavishing us with unhealthy food was against the company ethos, or something.

So the vans were stopped, and instead of the beautifully presented hamper we got paper bags of fruit, like something the supermarket would give away at the end of the day - mainly apples oranges and bananas.

PuppyMonkey · 12/06/2025 12:23

I love a shortbread, but only those thick rectangle Scottish ones. I’ve see some thin cheap round versions, cheap and nasty horrors. Worried for OP.

banivani · 12/06/2025 12:13

I am in Sweden and we have slightly different rules but yes, I join in the outrage. It's the principle of the thing. Once around 2011-2012 I was at a conference in Stockholm and there was a lovely-looking little mini dessert thing in a little cup on offer, some sort of piped white goodness and raspberries. Turns out they had been hijacked by LCHF nutters and it was pure cream cheese. I mean it's not like it's not decent fodder, but I felt I was sold a lie.

Maddy70 · 12/06/2025 12:09

Everyone knows the law is pastries and coffee on arrival , biscuits at break , nice lunch , biscuits and coffee in the afternoon.

The only perk of attending conferences!

Outrageous

Perhapsanothertime · 12/06/2025 12:05

TorroFerney · 12/06/2025 10:52

oh Yes an early start the venue provides breakfast pastries. What kind of savage has biscuits for breakfast. You are right op, thin end of the wedge.

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I wouldn’t know, being public sector we’re grateful to be given any kind of freebies whatsoever!

Livpool · 12/06/2025 11:57

I LOVE shortbread so would be made up to be honest

catgirl1976 · 12/06/2025 11:49

MousePolice · 12/06/2025 09:52

I travelled 2.5 hrs to a conference once and they served apples with the coffee. Apples and coffee on arrival, more apples and coffee at 11.30. At 2 they served a tiny sandwich lunch and it closed at 4.30. My stomach was rumbling throughout!

This has upset me. On quite a deep level.