to be fed up of this aggressive baking

[JHMJHM]

DH comes home at least once a month with yet another bakery offering from a woman he works with. I don't get when this became a thing? He defends it by saying how 'nice' it is and that she just likes 'making cakes' but I find it fucking odd and it really irks me.

To be honest I am queasy over other peoples baked goods- and I am sick of seeing her brownies seeping over my work surfaces. I don't get it at all and it boils my piss that DH cant see that it is WIERD. Why do people think they need to invest the time (and expense!) into feeding them their foul cakes? Its not like my DH is ill or thin, he is pretty robust.

LTB

I bake fairly regularly, because I am asked to for a group of teenagers at a club.. DH often takes any surplus into work and gives it to his colleagues. I would be fairly upset if that was seen as an act of aggression or causing meltdowns over my rock cakes seeping on someone's countertop. I kind of thought it was just that home baking was nice and it was nice to share. Obviously the world is more of a cesspit than I thought.

I'm absolutely useless at baking, and so I wish someone would aggressively bake me a cake sometime

I agree with Op it's a bit odd.

The only women who bake for DH are myself and his mum. I'd take any other woman baking specifically as a bit of a threat. I'd feel like she was advertising her skills as a far superior wife than I. The way I'd deal with it is upping my baking game though. I'd send him into work with the most amazing lunches and cakes. Possibly the same as she cooks, but better. With extra for her. 😊😊😊😝😝 I am a petty bitch though.

No big baking culture in my work but there is a massive snacking culture with a magic porridge pot of a shelf full of sweets and biscuits.

I never eat homemade stuff. My DM is a frequent baker / sharer, her house is filthy and she doesn't believe in use before dates. I'm sure most people are clean enough but a childhood in that household has put me off. I like baking with DC but wouldn't inflict it on others.

I'd be quite taken aback by that since I don't actually go around to each and every one of my colleagues and try to get them to eat my baking. As with everyone else's it's just kept in the kitchen for people to help themselves, and I obviously don't monitor who's taken some. So someone announcing out of the blue that they aren't going to eat it would be a bit weird, because who cares?

Birthday cakes are a bit different as some people will go out of their way to make sure everyone's included (I think out of fear someone will be left out as it gets passed around a la Office Space, more than some weird desire to force feed their colleagues). But unless his office has a birthday bash each week he really should be able to say no each time instead of making a big pronouncement.

However since your DH has gotten in such a habit of taking loads of this particular bakers baking home, he's going to have to lie a bit and say he's now avoiding sugar or something. The baking colleague doesn't need to know he's been taking and wasting her offerings all this time.

I'd take any other woman baking specifically as a bit of a threat. I'd feel like she was advertising her skills as a far superior wife than I.

At first I read this seriously and I was like this . But then I realised it's a joke isn't it?

It's free cake. Why are you whining, OP? Get a grip.

🎂

Is this the hussy, OP? If so, YANBU!

A Cake Fairy!

I really want a Cake Fairy. Do you think i could find one if I put a notice up in the newsagents

God I hope it's a joke! I made male friend a birthday cake to have at work because he's my mate. He took it home and shared it with his family.

Luckily his wife isn't neurotic - or she may have struggled to find someone else to make a cake at cost for her to gift to someone. As it is she asked him to ask me, and I did it. She's happy with my baking - not threatened by a cheeky lemon drizzle!

Oops! I was referring to this bit...

I'd take any other woman baking specifically as a bit of a threat. I'd feel like she was advertising her skills as a far superior wife than I.

I get very territorial and sniffy over MAH MAN sometimes, if I think another woman is sniffing around him, but some woman baking cakes for him once a month wouldn't bother me. And I don't think anything is going on.

think she is a feeder

She might be going for bake-off? You can't eat all the practice cakes yourself. (A friend of mine palmed them off on the neighbours for months -- who were happy to have them.)

OP YABU

I used to work in a very male dominated industry, and people used to bring cakes etc into work - including the men.
Sometimes home baked, but often shop bought: Eg, if someone bought there lunch at Sainsburys, and saw 2 for 1 on bags of cookies, they might buy them. Or a more senior member of staff would buy fancy cupcakes for everyone, or if someone had been on holiday they would return with local sweets.

There was never any left at the end of the day to take home though!

I work in an office in the City. There is a lot of cake. The majority of the home made stuff is made by women, but a significant minority comes from the men. I love baking but don't do it for the office.

There are never left overs for anyone to take home.

I'm with you, OP. It's weird.

1. The office eats the cakes. Why are there enough leftovers for tubs? Weird. Maybe they're shit cakes. Maybe no one likes her. Maybe she is literally baking them JUST for your husband.

1. Why's he the only one bringing them home? He's going to look like a greedy loser shuffling the soggy remains into tubs at 4.45pm.

1. Yeah. She could be focusing on him a lot. Story for you. There was a woman at my DH's work and I said "she's interested in you" but my oblivious DH said that no, she wasn't. Then she started baking cakes. She would 'forgot' to put them out for everyone to eat and then suddenly 'remember' the cake as my DH was leaving work, with this tale of "Oh no, I totally forgot about this, I made it and, oh, well, perhaps you would like it?" The first couple of times I reminded him, yeah, it's because she has a crush on you, and by the third bloody cake he realised yes, yes she did, and he didn't want eyelid-batting cake offerings. The last two cakes went unopened, grew stale on the countertop and were thrown out. The cakes stopped after that.

She bakes for the whole office and he's the one who takes them home, nothing personal.

I'd never eat food baked or cooked from someone whose kitchen I'd never visited unless they were known as being very clean. Some people will have animals walking all over the surfaces, not wash their hands and have snotty kids with their head over the bowl dripping the snot in... That's what I'd be thinking of when looking at them. I'd also be pissed off if he started getting a little fat eating them.

Also without sounding all 90s (because that is when I last worked in an office) it all just feels a bit... uhm.. unprofessional?? I get baking for charity or a PTA thing but not for work

I've had a think about this. You are saying that it is unprofessional from your 90s viewpoint i.e. from the times when the blokes were in charge, not far on from the 80s when we dressed in power suits with big shoulders to copy them and their world view.
The workplace has become more feminised so cakes at work have become OK and we do that in preference to the after-work drink, thank goodness because it was rubbish for those of us (i.e. mostly the women) who couldn't go because we had to get back to pick up the DC.

So, actually, cakes in the workplace is one of the gains of feminism and is a much more inclusive way to be sociable.

I'm coming to this thread late and haven't rtft.

But after reading the title I was thinking, yes the language around baking is quite aggressive. You BEAT the eggs, CREAM the butter and sugar, you WHIP the cream. It's like an S&M culinary event.

But anyway, I did get as far as the OP which was far more boring. It's just cake, chill the fuck out.

I'm with you OP. As an occasional thing I don't have a problem with cake in the office. But there is a fine line between "I made us all a cake, yay nice cake treat" and "I wanted to make a cake and now you have to eat it." No ones going to admit on the thread to being someone who takes in a cake to work and then tries to guilt people in to eating it. But in my experience those people are the most common kinds of bakers. No one wants to bake a lovely cake and bin it. Therefore they take it in to the office. It's now the office's "job" to dispose of it somehow.

I don't buy in to cake as a feminist issue in this case but it's definitely possible that it can be an obligation/guilt/control thing.

And those saying that the OP sounds unhinged are frankly just reinforcing that. She's not unhinged for not wanting to be jointly responsible more cake which then has to be either eaten (unwanted) or binned (wasted).

YABU.

Unless her cakes look like these... Then you need to worry.

Now we're talkin...