The Cake of Wonder

For my second momentous posting, I will rely on an incident at my job.  Perhaps incident is the wrong word, perhaps incidence of idiocy is more apt.

First, some background. I work at a restaurant, and we do private parties frequently.  Sometime in June or July, there was a woman, lets call her DeAndra, who wanted to have a private party in our private dining room in October, for her baby shower.  ( This was to be the first odd thing about the situation - shouldn't your friends be doing this for you?)  She also wanted to order a cake, from yours truly, the cake lady.  She did not want just any cake however, she wanted a very special cake.  The word special can be defined here as - I'm a whacko, and I have no idea what I want, so I am going to micro-manage every aspect of this freakin' cake as though my life depended on it.  I did not however, know this going into the situation.  I received an email from her, and was mildly annoyed because she wanted to do a cake tasting, which I do not usually do.  The cake needs of my restaurant are relatively simple and can usually be met by regular, well decorated, yet not super customized cakes.  The people choose a cake flavor, an icing flavor, and a filling flavor, and what they want it to say on the top, and ta daaa - a cake is born.
                 DeAndra however, would  not be thus satisfied.  So, we plan a cake tasting.  She seems to place a lot of undue importance on this, going back and forth between flavors, asking her husband (who she had dragged along to an 8 am cake tasting) what he thought, saying how moist this was, or did he think this one was too sweet.  At this point, I am all ready thinking... this is why I work with pastry, not with the people.    So, I made it through this tasting without throttling her, and I think, ok, we're good - by the end of the week or so, she'll email me a picture, and a flavor and we're done.  She decides upon a cake that looks like building blocks, will take me forever to make, and balks at the quoted price.  And yet, I still think that this ordeal is pretty much over with until I make said cake.
            Oh how wrong was I?  Oh I was very wrong indeed ladies and gents.  She then proceeded to email me not once, not twice, but somewhere in the neighborhood of whatever two times the number of weeks between July and October is.  I, of course, become progressively more annoyed, and do my best not to write emails ending in "F**k off Lady!".  Somewhere around the first of September, she wants another tasting.  At which point she changes the flavor she previously wanted from something I offered, to something she made up, and basically continues to imply that this cake is not going to be decorated to her liking.  So, while I do not want to lose my job at this point I desperately need to vent, and therefore penned the following, never to be sent email, in response to her "you didn't respond to my last email" email:

 

Dear DeAndra,

 

Kindly get over yourself and your freakin cake please.  If you don't trust me to make this thing, good luck finding someone else, somewhere else to mollycoddle you long enough to get out of you what the heck you actually want, because it has now taken me approximately 4 1/2 months.  It should not take half of the gestation period of your unborn child to figure out what you want the cake, to celebrate his/her impending birth, to look like.  You know why?  Because it really not that freakin important that's why.  I'm sorry your wedding cake did not meet your exacting standards.  And this cake won't either, because you're impossible.  I feel sorry for your husband and your fetus, because they are going to be the most henpecked individuals ever.  And good luck with all those birthday parties for that kid.  Good freakin luck with that - because if you're this concerned about what the cake looks like and this child is as yet unborn - i can't imagine how nuts you'll be by the time the 1st birthday rolls around.  I didn't email you back because there is absolutely nothing left to discuss.  Nothing.  And from my dealings with you, I am 100% certain that you will insure that this child will basically be wrapped in cotton batting from the moment it pops out.  He/she will never play contact sports, or learn to drive, or do anything really except perhaps take piano lessons, and eat organic foods.  And turn in perfect homework assignments.  Meticulous. 

 

Have a nice life, and please don't plan any more parties with cake here.  Please.

 

Sincerely,

The Jingo

The best/worst part of all of this is - this crazy be-yotch actually loved the damn cake!  She even sent me a hand written thank you note.  In which she stated she wishes I could make all of her future cakes.  I desperately hope she moves across the country sometime soon.   Because the next time I may have to kill her, and don't really want that on my conscience.