Getting a grip

Friday, 1 February 2008

You know sometimes (and I know it's not the ideal attitude in my line of work) I just want to shake people and say GET A GRIP - IT'S JUST A CAKE!  Why is it the people who are at the lower end of the profit scale are the ones who want to talk the most about their cakes and change their minds the most frequently! I've had a couple of recent examples - one is someone ordering the absolute base cake at the base cake price but even after a long face to face appointment (on a Sunday) has spend literally hours on the phone discussing her cake and now she claims she needs another face-to-face appointment to make sure I know exactly what she likes -aaargh!! .  In another case I spoke on the phone to a mum and daughter about their 16th birthday cake, and as I was talking to them in the back of my mind alarm bells were ringing as they clearly cared WAY too much about the cake  (i.e.  going on and on about all the details and things they wanted to include and wanting an appointment to discuss it all and I know they wouldn't have been expecting to pay more than $150 bucks for all of  this).  So I was glad that the daughter didn't follow up with an email the next day like we had agreed  (thus I happily assumed she wasn't interested in taking it any further - as many people don't - and  I filled the date with other orders in the ensuing weeks). Unfortunately in this case the daughter suddenly appeared 3 weeks later via email demanding that I make her cake. When I explained that it wasn't possible (and it wasn't - I had tonnes of other bookings by this stage) her MUM rang up to try to force me to do it.  I'm thinking that as a general rule it's a BAD idea to force anyone to do anything with food that you are intending to eat. Anyway- I explained the situation and gave them other cake people's contact numbers and hopefully some other poor cake-person was able to satisfy their cake needs.

 So anyway - this afternoon I was rung by a mum in tears as her daughters 21st birthday cake had just arrived and it was a 'disaster' - luckily it wasn't one of mine!  Apart from the fact it was delivered a week early (whoops - sounds like my sort of mistake!) they reeled off a gadzillion things wrong with it and all the while I was thinking that the mum is the person who's sposed to be telling the daughter to get over it - it's just a cake! - but instead it was the mum who was choked up with tears at the apparent disastrousness of the roses not matching the colour of the ribbon and the icing not being the exact shade of what-ever-colour they were expecting etc etc etc.  Apparently the original cake-maker has offered to do another one but they don't trust them to get it right (poor cakemaker - she should run a mile!). Anyway - for humanitarion reasons  (I must be having a humanitarion sort of week!)  I  will do what I can to help them out.