Cake Beef

Three days before the wedding and I decide it's wise to check up on last minute details, like calling to make sure they have the directions for the cake and cupcakes correct. We did decide to order them from Sam's Club, and the total for 70 cupcakes and one 5-inch round cake came to around $40, which is less than most people spend on a cake topper. I had left explicit instructions and was just hoping they could read my handwriting even though I had gone over everything with the employee when I placed the order. Of course, when we went back to do the ordering, the worker was nowhere to be seen. We waited patiently for about 5 minutes when I spotted a hapless produce worker. Although it wasn't his department, he came over to help. He said, after searching through the back of the bakery, that the lady working should be there as it is store policy if you're taking a break to let your coworkers know. He then got me an order form, and although he couldn't tell me any prices, he did what he could. When the bakery lady finally reappeared, the produce guy said, "Where were you?" She said, "I was on break." He then reminded her about the policy of letting people actually know you were on break, and she said, "I'm to grown to follow those rules." When she was good and ready to get to work, I set about describing everything I wanted. I wrote it out, read it to her, looked in her face to see if what I was saying was registering, then asked if she understood. All was well, and the order would be ready the day before the wedding. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I called about the cake only to find out from the lady on the other end of the phone that doing what I wanted was just not possible. They have a 5-inch round cake that comes with 10 cupcakes, and since Jerry's great niece and nephew were going to be there and their birthdays were coming up I thought we should include them and wanted half of those cupcakes to be Spiderman and the other half Hello Kitty while making the 5-inch cake pink. Since they were kiddies, I wanted the super-sweet frosting on the cupcakes but the more subdued flavor on the cake. No-can-do, she informs me. I also ordered two 30-piece cupcakes of mixed flavors, and was told I couldn't do that, either. You apparently can't mix frosting flavors, divide up characters in the same order, or have chocolate and vanilla cakes in the same order, either, although that was not what I was told when the order was placed. Then the disembodied voice tells me, "This is not a specialty bakery." Hmm, she must have had these problems before to be ready with that smart-ass remark so quickly. I told her I was fully aware they weren't a specialty bakery, and after some changes on my part, I think we'll still come out with almost the same chocolate to vanilla cupcake ratio and buttercream to whipped frosting ratio. You may be wondering what I did about the Spiderman and Hello Kitty cake toppers I wasn't able to get, so I'll tell you. I opened my laptop, found cute pictures of each of the characters and printed them out in glorious color on my printer. I then cut them out and attached the pictures to toothpicks with the help of a glue stick. I ended up getting what I wanted to begin with, even though I had to do a bit of the work myself.