I believe the disaster in question was my second ever cake.
Earlier that day I was involved in a small car crash, then I had to go to classes, got home pissed and decided to make the New Year cake...
(It was said we would have guests, so I, the mighty noob-baker, decided to make myself useful.)

Made the cake from scratch, just with egg whites, so I was left with about 12 yolks.
Divided the batter and started baking the cake layers...

Baked the first layer, plopped it onto a plastic tray, it stuck immediately.
Used a cookie spatula to lift it, and lifted only a part of it; the other part was still stuck on the tray.

Put in the second layer, the power went out.
My poor second layer was in a cooling oven for over and hour...
Finally, it baked, and I, again, plopped it on the plastic tray.
After a short pause I used to cry a bit, I lifted it and placed it on the rack.

Third layer I baked fine and cooled on rack, normally...

On with the filling...
I don't remember what I used as a filling, but I remember it was runny and, after crying a bit more, I put the cake together and used some whipped cream around the cake and as a decoration...

In the end, I was tired, pissed, sad and was looking at the most pathetic, sad little cake ever...

Luckily, we didn't have any guests, so we ate the cake by ourselves in a about a day (to cover up my fail)...

Moral of the story: If you're a noob, don't make a three layer cake; and do not, I repeat, do not, plop the hot cake onto a plastic tray.

I'm sorry that happened to you. It's nice that we can learn from our mistakes, though. Thanks for the tip about the plastic.

Your title and the moral of the story do not match but I am happy the cake was still edible after all the misfortune.

I learned a lot by making mistakes...
Such as:
2 cups of filling ain't gonna do the trick for a 4 layer cake,
if you can't carve a round edge, use a bowl, don't eyeball it,
when it's too warm, the cream will melt,
if you think you can't do rosettes, don't try directly on the cake...

PS. Thanks, infinitsky, I missed the "not" in the tittle