With Customers Like This, Nothing Is A Cakewalk

When I was in college, I worked part-time in a very popular local bakery as a clerk. One of my favorite jobs was retrieving custom-decorated cakes for customers, as it allowed me to see the work of our extraordinary decorators.

One very busy Saturday morning, a woman came in to pick up a cake and I was the clerk available to take her ticket. This woman was your classic middle-aged short-bobbed soccer mom archetype, but since this bakery catered to the suburbs of a sizeable city, we got plenty of customers who looked like that and caused no issues. This customer seemed impatient, but I did not consider it a red flag at the time since she clearly had a party to get this cake to.

I took the customer’s name and headed into the back to find her cake, and what I found was a huge, gorgeous round cake for a baby’s baptism. The top and sides were covered in creamy off-white frosting roses which had been finished with a coating of edible shimmer spray (basically a very classy glitter) that made rainbows dance over the cake when I moved it through the light. In the center of the cake was a lovely little sugar cross, about four inches tall and two inches wide, and the cake’s dedication was perfectly spaced around the curve of the cake top.

I was so awed by this masterpiece of cake-decorating artistry that I paused to show it to every single coworker I encountered on my way back up to the counter. I held the cake with as much care as I would show to an infant, fearful of doing the slightest damage to it in transit. I reached the counter and set the cake in front of the customer, beaming.

The customer looked down at this beautiful, delicate, shimmering creation and SNEERED.

Customer: “I thought the cross would be bigger.”

I felt the smile slide straight off my face. For a moment, I wondered if I had misheard. Surely she couldn’t be criticizing this cake, of all cakes?

Me: “Sorry?”

Customer: “The sugar cross. I wanted it to be big enough to cover the whole cake, and I wanted the writing to be on the cross.”

I was speechless. All my customer service poise had completely abandoned me, and I just stood there gaping at this woman in utter shock.

Customer: “Just get me your manager.”

Dazed, I left the counter and sent my manager out to deal with the situation. I stayed in the back for a bit, quietly ranting to my coworkers about the experience.

After a few minutes, the manager headed past my little gossip group into the back area and returned with our chief decorator. After several more minutes, the decorator tromped back, clearly fuming.

Me: “So, what happened?”

Decorator: “She decided to take it, eventually. I don’t know what she expected us to do. I remember that order. We explained repeatedly that we don’t make the sugar crosses in-house and that the ones we get from our supplier would be too small to write on!”