Today I walk into work to a level five alert. A woman who ordered a cake has yelled at my employees and has stated that the cake she picked up was nothing like the cake she ordered. I took her order and wrote down light pink, light blue and light green as the colors to use on her daughters birthday cake. Our best cake decorator, the guy with nearly 30 years of designing cakes, handled the creation of her cake. The colors came out exactly as described. She wanted light pastel colors and she got light pastel colors. That is until she saw the cake.

The cake looked great and when she came to pick it up one of our high school employees picked up her cake to box it for her. When this woman laid eyes on the cake she became irate. “These colors were not light enough and were nothing like she imagined them looking.” She demanded that we redecorate her cake. They informed her that our cake decorator has gone home for the day and that we could not handle her request. To attempt to accommodate her displeasure with a visually perfect cake, one of our employees offered her four cupcakes as an “I’m sorry for your displeasure and dissatisfaction peace offering.”

This threw the woman into a tailspin. We were giving her a cake that feeds twenty and four cupcakes as a peace offering. Her reaction was “This is unacceptable; I want the cake and twenty five cupcakes.” Our employees stood strong and would not give in to her demands. She asked for my home phone number to talk with me about her displeasure. They would not give her that information and said that I would be in at noon that day.