Might Have To Walk Them Through This Cake Walk

(A customer is ordering a wedding cake.)

Customer: “This is what I want: a hundred pieces, four-tiered cake, and here is a picture of the model. There’s nothing too special about it; it’s just a simple design, so it shouldn’t be hard to make.”

(She shows me a picture of a wedding cake with a luscious, top-to-bottom cascade of roses, covering almost half of its surface. I know that to make that number of flowers it will take me at least a week and will probably involve me staying after working hours, more than once, but I put on a brave face and calculate the cost.)

Me: “The price of your order will be [price].”

Customer: “What?! Why so much?”

Me: “Well, it does sound lovely, but this particular model is thickly covered with roses. Sugar flowers are expensive, because they are slow to make.”

Customer: “But it’s only a simple model!”

Me: “I admit, the rest of the design looks simple enough, but the sheer amount of flowers will lift the price up.”

Customer: “But it’s only a simple wedding cake!”

Me: *getting fed up* “Look! I counted nearly a hundred individual roses. It’s hard work making them, because they are so time-consuming. The price of one single rose is [price of rose] and put together, they will actually cost more than the edible part.”

Customer: “…”

Me: “…”

Customer: “It’s still too expensive, and I can’t see why.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I just explained to you why.”

Customer: “Fine! I’ll just pick another model, then.”

Me: “I think that’s a good idea.”

(The kicker in this story is that the customer was one of our own employees, she was a cake decorator herself, and she had years of experience making both wedding cakes and sugar flowers.)