Crazy Customer Stories - Page 3

How can people be so ridiculous? I mean, SERIOUSLY????!!!!! How is this possible? I'm going to offer you $125 for 600 cookies, and then get mad when you don't take my offer. WHAT? Who does that? The really sad part about this, is these people are driving on the same roads we all are- WHOA! Don't you wonder some days how some people actually get themelves dressed every day? I know I do!

Knock on wood, I haven't had any bad customers - but I almost want to, just to be able to add something really funny here. LOL Thanks for keeping me entertained this evening!

............and, quite honestly, there's nothing WORSE than a supermarket cupcake, either..................

Rae

I took in a couple of carrot cakes today using the recipe that won me 2 blue ribbons at the county fair last week ...won 1 for 2 layer frosted cake and 1 for loaf cake.

So....a friend says oh this is good...you can keep practicing for 2 years and do my daughters wedding cake for her!!?!?!?! (for free????) and the worker next to her just loves the cake and shared a piece with her husband that she picked up from the airport and he must know the recipe...but she promises not to enter the county fair with the recipe and in fact she doesn't cook, but could I e mail her the recipe and she won't share it with anyone!!!!!!!!!

Gees.......

I tell my friend it take awhile to make a wedding cake and that she'd need to pay my salary (from my day job for a week... she says "it's just a cake... i thought joking and telling her the above would have her back off.... nope......
I told her I teach cake decorating and not sure I'd be interested in baking cakes in 2 years.

Where do people get off thinking ya wanna make them their dream cake for free!?!?! and the special recipe for winning cakes just tossed on to casual acquaintances....

oh god i have so many bad customer stories but most of them are not cake related at all (i've worked retail way too long) but i feel like sharing a couple anyway, you guys will still laugh at the crazy people anyway, right? well i worked in a music store once upon a time that had a ticketmaster machine in it. a woman came in a wanted tickets for a play and she tells me the name of the play but she doesn't know the location so look it up and no, i don't find it. i ask if she's sure it is carried by ticketmaster and she replies yes and she begins to get snippy. i keep typing it over and over again and try seraching for it anyway possible but still no luck the woman proceeds to call me names and tell me that i must be stupid or something, i tell her that i am trying my best and then she picks up a magazine off the counter and hits me with it. i almost flew over the counter to beat the crap out of her. well a few weeks later i see an ad for the play in the paper, the reason i couldn't find it was that it was not correct english for the title it was spelled all ghetto like and how exactly was i suppsed to know that if the woman doesn't tell me? i had a line of people waiting to buy wrestling tickets once and they started their own little riot on me because i was following the rules setforth by ticketmaster about a raffle for the 1st position in line, i had to lock myself in the store and call the cops. when i worked in a framing shop i had people come in and ask how much stuff was that was on the wall even though they had 3"x3" red tags on them with the price listed and then ask me what kind of discount could i give them on it, hello you are in the mall not the flea market! i now work at a portrait studio and have people coming to me with coupons for $3.99 portrait sheets and asking me if i can give them a better deal because of course i set the prices for all jcpenney portrait studios, didn't you know?
and as for cake, the worst i had was a woman who had me doing sketch after sketch and changing her mind over and over again about the theme of the cake and then when we finally settle on what she wants and i giver her a price she says she has to consult her mom who was paying. the mom said it was too expensive and she asked if i could cut out the delivery charge since she was going to invite me to her child's party. i only met this woman online in a mom's group, yeah, let me make her kid's cake and bring it to her house for free and drag my kids along and buy the little brat a gift too. gee just what i wanted to do!
anyway before i keep going all night long with this, i'll stop now.

Where do I start??? LOL If ya don't know about my horror story from a week ago...I call it the Poo Pooh cake in my gallery. That lady gave me the blues. But enough about that nut case. I have a lady call me one day asking me to do a cake for her daughter. Hello Kitty...then she goes, can you not put that Pop Rock candy on top of the cake. I'm like WHAT?? Pop Rock candy...who in the h*ll would do that? Bewildered, I asked her...pop rock candy? She had never had a cake of mines but saw a picture. She saw edible glitter and thought it was Pop Rock candy. Duh?? I still don't see how she confused glitter with Pop Rock. Yep, wanted to slap her 'cause she got sassy with me when telling me not to put it on there. I should've bought some and put it on there anyways...but I'm nice.
Give me a day, and I can come with some more crazy customers. I try to forget them so they are surpressed right now.

One of my worse cases involved a wedding for which I was hired to do the wedding coordination in addition to the cake. Turns out it was a divorced parents wedding. In addition to making sure the cost of everything was equally divided between the bride's parents, the bride's father insisted as the wedding coordinator it was my task to tell the bride that she needed to have her teeth whitened after taking her braces off before the wedding portrait AND that I needed to get the groom lifts for his shoes because he was shorter than the bride and would look funny standing at the altar......yes, this was HIS daughter.

Just wanted to tell you how much I love your cakes! You rock. : )

Is there a way you can maybe get a picture from her? Explain to her how yours was lost, and you really want a picture of it for your portfolio? Surely at a birthday party "someone" would have taken a picture.

It sounds wonderful. I'm sorry she didn't realize how lucky she was to have such a unique cake.

I'm sorry your family doesn't understand. I think it's very important all close family members understand exactly how much time, energy, and money goes into making any cake, even just the little character cakes. That way, when someone says, "Hey, can your daughter/sister do this cake for me?", they can always answer with Yes, probably, but I can assure you it won't be cheap.

As for my family, itself, well I never charge them. If it's elaborate and expensive, I tell them to consider it a gift. If it's just a favor, eh.. on the house, unless someone other than them is paying for it. (i.e. my sister, the teacher, needs cookies for a student function but the school is paying for it, then I give it to her at cost.)

Maybe I'm weird, maybe I'm too nice for my own good. *shrug* I don't know.. It's just how I am.


Holly

*rolling deriously(sp?!) on the floor..............these are just too funny/not funny to share! I am just getting really started in the 'business' so to speak......looks like I have some floozies to look out for out there! I worked in daycare, preschool, public school and most recently RETAIL and I thought I had seen it all........I obviously have not began to scratch the surface! THANKS FOR SHARING...and WARNING THE REST OF US, ROFL!

I am just a hobby baker but I have had friends try to get me to go in business. I am no where near as good as most of you here on CC but I am self taught and still learning. I had one friend who was at my DD's party and she told me that I should sell my castle cakes. I told her I didn't think I could get people to buy them for what they were worth and I wasn't licensed. She told me if I sold them for half what the grocery stores sold them for I wouldn't have any problem. I asked her what they sold theirs for and she said $40! They use the Disney kit instead of the real looking castle cake. I told her there wasn't any way that I have more in supplies than that! People really don't have a clue until they either watch you or try and do it themsevles!

Well, heck if I sold ANYTHING for half of the competition price, I'd sell a lot of them. Until I filed bankruptcy!

Hehe. I'm loving this thread! (It does seem a bit morbid, though--kind of like watching Punked, only without someone coming in at the end and saying it was all just a joke.)

Really, though, there seems to be a common theme here (even more than cheap, stupid people). It's like people think they're doing us a favor by allowing us to bake for them. I don't even mean this in the "give you my business" way. It's like we must be so hard up and desperate to make a cake that they're taking pity on us, sacrificing the glories of a Walmart cake, and "letting" us make a cake. Uh... WTF?!?! If I had nothing but time and no desire to make money, I'd rather make cakes for the local homeless shelter and every other charity that crossed my path. That would at least come with appreciation!

The story that stands out in my mind was from a few years ago - I had booked a consultation with a bride and groom that wanted cupcakes for their wedding...the bride was ADAMANT on cupcakes...she liked the look of them, and wanted them for her wedding - fine. At the consultation, while looking at my portfolio and other books, she decides that she wanted a 3-tier cake instead, so we designed one (keep in mind she now had no clue what she wanted - I walked her through the process for TWO hours).

When I wrote up the quote and started to go through the numbers with the couple, she broke down in tears - she wanted cupcakes, had always wanted cupcakes, and how could her groom talk her out of cupcakes?? Massive fight started in front of me - I broke it up by telling them that I would not book with them that day until they had made a decision AT HOME on what they wanted - obviously there was more discussion needed between them. Off they went to discuss it more. I heard back from the bride about a week later, saying that they would love for me to do their cupcakes, so we got the contract signed and all was tickety-boo.

When I went to setup the cupcakes at the reception a few months later, some other vendors were there too (they all knew each other, it being a small town, and I was the only out-of-town vendor). They were chatting amongst themselves about how much trouble this bride had given them over the past few months with her breakdowns (hee hee!), so it wasn't just me! The DJ asked everyone if we would like some music while setting up, so he "dedicated" the first song to the bride - it was some song about selling your soul to the devil... my eyes must have bugged out of my head at this point...thank goodness I was busy placing cupcakes!!

I've had quite a few other good stories, but I'll save those for another day!!!

I say we all invite those who think we over charge for cakes over to give them a hands on experience decorating cakes. From start to finish- I bet they wouldn't doubt another price again.
My hubby (when I first started decorating cakes) thought that I over charged for them, then he stayed home and watched the kids while I decorated one cake and decided I under charge. LOL Shows him.
Same thing with a lady who wanted to learn how to decorate from me. I invited her over to the house to help me do a cake for her father's 80th b-day so she can get some hands on while doing it. It took about 8 hrs to do it even with her help and having half done when she got here. I was just gonna charge her for materials in the end about $28 but she ended up leaving about 5 hrs into it saying she was tired and payed me $80. Again, goes to show they really have no idea what it takes to do even the simplest looking cake. If they did I'm sure they'd charge more than we do!