So many many years ago in a galaxy far far away, I used to work at a local grocery store during my time in community college. I have many stories form that time, but this one takes the cake (literally and metaphorically as you'll see).
To start, some background. I had college from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Thus, my job at the grocery store was closing shift, 3:30-8:00. This means several things. Firstly, I missed much of the day shift events and jobs, which could be an issue if there was something important, but typically was rather nice. Second, it meant I never really saw much of my manager, so any issues that arose would have been shifted to another department manager in the store since I held very little power as a basic employee. Third, it meant that for the majority of my shift, I was completely alone.
Now the place I worked at was a standard bakery deli as is found in many grocery stores. This means you had all the generic duties one might expect, but importantly for this story, it means that on occasion, you would have to write on a cake with some icing. This expectation extended to all deli employees, not just the managers, and not just the cake decorator. Since this task did not come around all that often (maybe once every other week), I was not good at it, since people typically don't come to get a cake written on after 3:30 and thus I did not have much experience. In addition, many people would call in for the cake ahead of time, so the cake decorator would simply write on the cake, and put it in the cooler for later. That said, I had up until this incident, never received any complaints about the quality of my work.
All these issues compound with this tale.
One day, if I remember correctly, late July, I had come in for my shift. Upon my arrival, the assistant department manager is there. He tells me that there is a lady, who will be coming in at 5:30, to pick up a cake. He shows me a note with what she wants to be written on the cake, which says "Happy birthday Kelvin". He tells me to wait until she arrives to do it, as he wants me to ask her if she wants the "happy birthday" part written in icing, or simply placed on it with a little plastic "happy birthday" cake decoration. Sure, no problem. I'm not great at writing on cakes, but no one has complained before, and I'm happy to help. So I get into my shift, frying chicken and cleaning the rotisserie oven as usual. 5:30 rolls around, and no sign of this lady. No problem, maybe she just canceled, that happens from time to time. Then, 6:30 rolls around and I look up from the corner I was sitting in at the time and see her. She asks about the cake and of course, I go and get the note and the plastic decoration. I asked her if she wanted the cake with written icing or just the cake decoration with the name added to the icing. She is immediately upset by this and says "I told you guys I wanted it all written on there." A little rude, but no skin off my back, she had expected to be ready now and it not being so is not my fault and not fair to her. I tell her "I apologize, ma'am, I only got here a few hours ago and only have details through this note, let me get right on that, sorry for the inconvenience." So I go and grab a cake, and write "Happy Birthday Kelvin" on it. The whole interaction was about 15 minutes, and once I finished writing on the cake I hand it back to her. Here's where things begin to go off the rails. She is immediately furious with me and tells me she had wanted "Happy Birthday Calvin" written, not "Kelvin" written on it, and that the writing was terrible and sloppy. Now as you might imagine, this was news to me, since all I had was the note and had never had the quality of my writing be an issue, so I explained the situation and offered to redo it, saying "I'm sorry ma'am, all I was given was this note, let me take that back and I can redo it for you." Her response, was less friendly, saying "No, this is unacceptable, you better make this right." As you will remember, I held 0 power, and could not make anything right as that was beyond my control. Due to that, I told her "I'm sorry, but this is the most I can do. I can go get a manager for you and they can certainly help you." She responded "No, I want you to make this right." So I reiterated to her that I am at the limit of my power, and that I can find her a manager if she so desires. At that point, she stormed off and I was essentially left sitting in shock that someone would act that way about a cake of all things. I ended up just going back to my duties of cleaning up the deli for the time being. Unfortunately, there's no real satisfying ending. 30 minutes after all this went down, the store manager came over to me and asked to see the note. He then told me that was ridiculous and never should have happened, and then that was the end of it. That said, I noticed from that point onward that the assistant deli manager would write on cakes when the time arrived, so he certainly got a talking-to.
This story and other experiences like it are one of the many reasons why I never want to work food service again if I can help it. People getting so ugly over just-food is beyond me, and the entitlement and expectations they have of the basic low level workers is baffling
