Once the woman arrived home, she called the bakery three times in the next half hour leading up to noon to talk with me. Each time refusing to leave her phone number or name so I could call her back when I got to work. When I arrived, the high school employee who handled the boxing of her cake was practically I tears. She was scarred to death that the woman would call again and yell at her over the phone. I thought, “This sounds like a reasonable and level headed person we are dealing with.”

I talked to all three employees working at the time, got their side of the story. They all thought the cake looked beautiful and was a shining example of the creativity and decorating style typical of the cakes we create. As we finished, the phone rang. It was the woman. Our conversation started off with her yelling at me in demanding and authoritative tones.

“Hello Scott, I picked up a cake this morning that was nothing at all like the cake I ordered from you. The colors were not light enough. You wrote on my order light green, this is lightish green but definitely not the light green I envisioned. I want my money back.”

“I am sorry but I can not do that” I say calmly.

She is now yelling over the phone at me. “This is not what I wanted and now my daughters fifth birthday will be ruined. To top it off your employees only offered my four cupcakes when I complained. This cake feeds twenty and four cupcakes is an appalling offer. I want to bring my cake down right now and get the colors like I want them.”