The Thread about Allergy-Suffering Client and Business Practices - Page 3  

Absolutely 100% right. You'll be much less likely to run into situations that you can't handle if you've thought things through ahead of time and don't just wing it. It would be easier to just not offer special order types of cakes if you don't have those worked out, and it isn't fair to customers or to yourself to add the stress of "figuring it out as I go and maybe it will work" to what should be a simple order.

Stand-up comedians use audience reaction to gauge where they need to adjust their set. Making this reaction more difficult to read is doing the comedian a disservice.

guys, if someone posted a thread entitled,

 

"gonna jump off a cliff",

 

some of you would yell

 

GO

 

some of you would scold them for thier choice and suggest a better place to jump from

 

some would pop popcorn

 

there's no place like home there's....

 

 

I couldn't agree more.  The extra months spent preparing would have made this a non issue.  No, we never have it all 100% down, and yes we all make adjustments along the way, but something like knowing that your chocolate may contain nuts would have made this problem non existent.  Also... there is more than one kind of chocolate out there, and having a backup brand that is nut free or having a back up recipe that uses cocoa powder would be a good thing to have.  I also implore everyone to not take on allergy free orders unless they know what they are doing as a life hangs in the balance.  I'm sure you would have felt much worse had the child had a reaction.  I don't condemn you for realizing this was an order you should have never taken at all, but having the plans in place would have allowed you more time to make other plans.

What the heck are you going on about? F'real. K8, I mean. Everyone else makes sense, but I don't get what you're saying, sorry, I just don't. :(

 

With all due respect I was addressing op mostly, not you.

Ok cool, I don't have to worry about trying to figure it out then. Thanks for the clarification!

This!! Don't jump into the deep end if your not ready. You've made threads that are all over the place from months ago, you are starting a business, you're not starting a business, mixing wet ingredients, this happened, that happened. Just chill and gather your thoughts for a couple of months, you don't need to be super super organised but at least know in what direction you need to move in. Seriously, the iron is not hot.

I tell them that I will do the best I can by providing nut free ingredients, boiling my beaters and bowls but in the end, I can't guarantee a totally nut free product as I'm relying on the manufacturing companies I get my ingredients from to also be nut free and a lot of them can't claim that.  I tell them that to be totally sure, I'll need to go to a health food store and purchase a mix that's labeled nut free and add the cost of the mix and the mileage to their tab.  That's when they usually hang up and it's no longer my problem :-)  If someone cancelled the day before my daughter's birthday I too would be livid but I'd be livid and would sue you if she ended up in the hospital.  Next time you might want to take the time to be prepared and like the other poster said, if you have too many orders - to the point of exhaustion - time to raise your prices.  If they're gunna make you work, you better make them pay.

Totally agree with AZCouture on this one. . . .if you are in business, act like a business person. Be professional.  And if you don't know how to do that, there are business classes available that can help some people.  Otherwise, you waste your time, money and risk everything you have because you didn't prepare and your business will NOT succeed.  You may just get sued for discrimination and emotional trauma- even though we all think this lady is waaaaayyy  over the top, we all also know that  there are all kinds of lawyers out there that are happy to sue a business (that supposedly has an insurance company behind them). 

And by "act like a business person. be professional" I mean know what you can do and what you can't and don't promise something unless you can deliver it.  I think we've all had a chuckle at the thousands of photos on Cake Wrecks. . . .those are people that promised what they could not deliver.  Obviously a BAD thing otherwise they wouldn't have a website that is hugely successful.  ;)

There is no case for discrimination so I wouldn't worry about that, and if the customer was even able to find a lawyer to pursue an "emotional trauma" suit the OP's liability insurance company should be able to make short work of it.

If OP refused to make any cake at all (including a cake with nuts) for the customer after finding out there was a nut allergy, that could potentially be a valid discrimination case.

Jason, are you saying that a bakery that does not offer allergy free cakes are discriminating against people with allergies? 

No, but if you find out someone has allergies and then refuse to sell them anything, that could be considered discrimination based on a medical condition (which is a protected class). There is no requirement to offer allergy-free cakes, the discrimination is based on refusal to serve a customer.

AFAIK this has not been tested in court so I have no idea whether or not it would be considered a valid argument. They would also need to show that the refusal was based on the allergy and not for another reason.