A guy calls the bakery:

Caller: “I need a white/vanilla ‘Bleeding Cake’ for the next day.”

In our bakery, a ‘Bleeding Cake’ is a cake with enough filling that it will ooze and “bleed” when cut.

Me: “We don’t do next day cake orders.”

He hangs up, but then the owner came down an hour later:

Owner: *Angry.* “Who turned down the ‘Bleeding Cake’ order?”

Me: “I did. He wanted it next day.”

Owner: “That guy is a newscaster and my husband’s friend!”

I got yelled at for following her directions because I made her “look bad.” Mr. Newsman got his ‘Bleeding Cake.’ Good times.

Customer: “Why is this flavor ‘pain’?”

Me: “That’s French for ‘bread’, sir.”

Customer: “So, the French make it like, super spicy or something?”

Me: “No, sir.”

Customer: “Then why is the flavor ‘pain’?”

Me: “It’s not a flavor, sir. ‘Pain’ is the French word for ‘bread’.”

Customer: “But why is it so painful? Is it because French bread is so hard and crusty?”

Me: “No, sir. French bread is just normal bread. It just has a different name.”

Customer: “Okay…”

Just when I think he’s finally got it:

Customer: “…so is French bread painful?” 

Me: “Not as much as this conversation.”

I worked as a cake decorator during my undergrad. I worked in a grocery store chain, so we were all about efficiency and speed; I had like seven minutes per cake to fully assemble and decorate standard case cakes. (That didn’t happen, but I tried!) We could have fifteen minutes for custom orders. The hours we were allotted for cake decorators for one week depended on how productive we’d been in previous weeks; the system counted automatically every time we printed a label for a cake.

Once, a young guy came in and placed a custom order. I was twenty-two, so he was probably around twenty-five. My brain is telling me he looked slightly like a “chill” type; maybe he had a beard and a beanie.

Customer: “I want a sheet cake for my friend’s birthday. On it, I’d like an artistic interpretation of what each of my friends would look like as a cat based on their physical appearances and personality traits. I want each cat to have an item that reflects a hobby — like, one friend who likes to write would have a notebook… but still as a cat. Oh, and I also need you to write each cat’s name so they’ll know who is who.”

He tried to describe each one of his friends to me in terms of appearance, notable characteristics, and hobbies. He had like eight friends.

I wish I remembered how I got out of the conversation and subsequently got out of that order! I usually worked with my manager or my bakery lead, and I feel like the lead took over. We were allowed to reject orders if they were better suited to a specialty bakery. (Many were; I don’t know why people thought we could do tiered cakes or use fondant.) We could turn down orders like this that were straight-up ridiculous.

It was really funny to me, though. I remember the guy being super earnest about the cat cake.

I loved working in the bakery department of a large, upscale grocery store. My job was the customer side, performing at a fast pace while packaging baked goods to fill the shelves, attending to customers, taking custom orders, answering phones — all the tasks you’d expect.

A pleasant young man was hired, and I trained him. He absolutely loved interacting with customers and was a smiling “people person” who was liked by his coworkers — until he wasn’t. He made it a point to work as much on the customer floor as possible, either restocking or arranging product. He would engage everyone who passed by, whether they were shopping or just passing to the next department.

Many times, he’d ask what they were looking for and walk them to the product — at the other end of the store! This left the rest of us to pick up the slack with packaging of tons of product, phones, orders, etc. He schmoozed the customers and many times spent twenty minutes talking to one. Then, he’d move on to the next one. He was getting the stink-eye from his coworkers, but he really thought that was “his job” — and who gets in trouble for making customers happy?

After we complained to the bakery manager, he also wondered how he could rein someone back who got so many compliments from the customers. He was like a personal shopper for the bakery!

The front crew decided to talk up his “skills” to management to maybe get him transferred to another department. Not surprisingly, it was decided that his great customer skills would be perfect for the front end, with sooooo many great comments about how helpful he was. He became a cashier, and not just that, but he became the assistant manager — jumping over thirty cashiers with more seniority who coveted the job.

Now he had a full plate of tasks that couldn’t wait and that he had no experience with, he had unhappy resentful cashiers who didn’t make his job easier, he had to schedule breaks and lunches according to union laws, and he floundered big time.

After six weeks, he begged to be sent back to the bakery, but he’d jumped unions with the promotion and he’d timed out to be able to go back. So, he became a regular, non-star cashier in the trenches. Now he had close supervision, benchmarks for items rung per minute in place, and no time to schmooze the public. He actually worked out fine — but not as happy. He’s still a smiling face and a pleasant person with great customer service skills… but I regret nothing!

I am working in the early hours of Saturday morning at my bagel shop (around 7:30), and I am helping in the drive-thru. Our location has an obnoxious dinging noise whenever a car comes through, and I swear I hear it in my sleep. I hear that annoying ding and I start the transaction.

Me: “Good morning, how may I help you?”

Customer: “Can I have a minute?”

Me: “Sure, take your time!”

She only takes ten seconds, which makes me happy.

Customer: “Okay, I’m ready!”

Me: “Okay!”

Now, with most normal people, when I say, “Okay!” in a sunshiney voice, they get the idea that I’m anticipating them ordering. Not this lady.

She just sits there and doesn’t respond to me. This is by far one of my biggest pet peeves working at my job.

After another ten or so seconds, I ask her:

Me: “What do you want?”

I don’t say this with any attitude or sarcasm. I just ask her what she wants so I can move the line along.

Customer: “A plain bagel.”

When someone says this, we’re trained to say, “With nothing on it?” because a lot of the time, people think that we’re mind readers and that we know what they’re thinking. We only say this when someone says a bagel and then says nothing after that. That’s what this lady does.

Me: “…With nothing on it?”

Customer: “You didn’t let me finish! A plain bagel, not toasted, with cream cheese.”

Me: “Oh, okay, so a plain bagel, not toasted, with cream cheese. Can I get you anything else today?”

I’ll admit that I am extremely sarcastic when talking to her at this point because she is being rude.

Customer: “Yes, I want someone else to help me.”

Me: “I’m sorry, that’s not possible right now. Everyone else is busy.”

Customer: “Well, I want someone else. I really don’t want you helping me.”

Me: “Well, that’s too bad because no one else is available, so you’re stuck with me.”

She finishes her order and drives up. She comes up to the window, gets her order, and asks the guy if she can speak to the manager.

Coworker: “Okay, but you were just talking to her.”

Customer: “You’re the manager, and you were just taking my order?”

Me: *With a big smile* “Yup!”

Customer: “You were extremely rude! ‘What do you want?’ That’s so rude!”

Me: “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I was just trying to get your order, and you weren’t answering me.”

Customer: “You need to speak to people better.”

Me: “I really don’t see the issue here. I was trying to help you, and you weren’t answering, so I said what I had to in order to get the answers from you. If you don’t like that, I have nothing else to say about it.”

Customer: “You were really rude!”

Me: “I’m not worried about it. Are you worried about it?”

Customer: “You should be. You were really rude!”

Me: “Oh, well, I’m not.”

She kept yammering on.

At this point, I was grinding coffee, which happens to be next to the window. I wasn’t actually standing there talking to her because I knew that this wasn’t a situation that I needed to or wanted to defuse. I just let her talk while the window was open. Finally, the window automatically closed on her, and I just turned around and walked away.

I’m not sure what her reaction was, but I like to imagine she was stunned that her complaining was cut off and no one was going to engage with her anymore.

It’s times like these when I’m glad I’m a manager. People try to pull nonsense with me, and I just tell them no. They have no choice but to accept it.