At Least It Wasn't A Flash Drive
October 17, 2011 I don't know about you guys, but when I get something unexpected in the mail, I can't WAIT to open it.
Well, unless it's a bill. Or junk mail. Or suspiciously soggy*.
Anyway, the point is, I think it's basic human nature to want to know what's inside a mystery container. To explore! To learn! To find potential new sources of money/fame/candy! C'mon, it's the basic premise of birthday parties, Christmas, and that whole Pandora-and-her-box thing.
Case in point: if someone handed you a large padded envelope and asked you to "please put this on my cake," and you were, you know, someone who makes cakes, would you...
A) Open the envelope to see what your customer wants printed on the cake
OR
B) Scan the OUTSIDE of the envelope and print that on the cake?
Survey says...
;)
The answer is "Crystal Image Big Prints" clear!
Many thanks to Monica S., who reports she got this gem of a response when she complained:
"You never told me to look in the envelope."
Anyone else suspect this baker gets a lot of wrapping paper for Christmas?
*"Suspiciously Soggy" should totally be a band name. Make this happen, people.
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Quick Reminder: Hey, Atlanta! Tomorrow night! Our very first "Winter Underlined" Show! Be there!
Reader Comments (67)
Wish I were in Atlanta (or any city you're going to at the right time)! Sadly Akron/ Cleveland/NorthEast Ohio didn't make the book tour :( Anyway... This posting made me belly laugh out loud, THANKS FOR THE GREAT START TO A MONDAY GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was wondering when you were starting your tour! Safe travels and see you in Hartford! My daughter goes to a school for music so I will have to have her spread the word for a new band name! :) Suspiciously Soggy! Rock on!
Your payment was in the envelope.
Haha! Love it!
Can't wait to see you tomorrow night - the highlight of my week!
Even the sperm/balloons appear confused. Some are fleeing the scene, some are tilting their heads wonderingly, some are huddled together dicussing the curiosity...
Good luck on the tour! I ame quite tempted to fly to Atlanta for tomorrow night and then follow you across the country for your entire tour. How do you feel about being stalked?
Ugh...jeeze....sometimes I can just feel my brain cells dying when faced with situations like this!
It's off-center, even. Wow.
At least there are colorful 3D-ish sperms on it. That's gotta count for something.
since the sperm are moving away, this envelope obviously contains that much hoped-for document that says "you are NOT the father"....
best wishes for a great tour! please save some cake for chicagoish!
I got distracted by the sperm balloons. I was trying to figure out what they were supposed to tell me was in the package. Maybe it was a multicolored pregnancy test.
This website is starting to make me feel like bakers are the dumbest people on the planet... If you are a baker who's reading this, I'm sorry. :(
I REAAAALLLLY have to wonder the type of person who was employed at this super-mart who made this cake. seriously, who does something like this?!?! I am just completely shocked that something like this would happen and it WASN'T on purpose!
Normally any comment I leave on here is never so...harsh? But, I just cannot believe that this happened. WOW
Laura C: I don't think you could possibly call the person who made this a baker. This would imply that they actually BAKED the cake but no, they only slapped on some pre-made frosting and put their ugly mark on it. As a pastry chef and baker I am offended that anyone would make this and call themselves a baker!!!
I have a file in my desk marked "In case I die mysteriously" and I recently opened a box that came in the mail that I took back to the post office so we could all stand looking at it because none of us knew exactly what to do with it. Sooooo I probably would have just scanned the outside also.
"...lots of wrapping paper for Christmas." I would have splorted coffee out my nose, if I drank coffee. (Crisis averted)
Hey, safe travels, Chef Wreckers! Tell your mom you're wearing your seatbelts and looking both ways before running a red light!
I'll see what I can do about that band name wish.
Ummmm, I have no words.
Or, your in-laws could offer to throw a baby shower for you and instead of buying actual invitations they could put a SLIP OF PAPER in a RETURN ENVELOPE for bills (I am not joking) and have all of the invitees you wanted to come NOT show up because they thought the invite was junk mail or a bill. True story. Then again, come to think of it, I am glad none of my family or friends showed up. Too bad I am due in a week, I would so be in the ATL tomorrow for your tour! Have a blast guys!
This reminds me of he flash drive cake, they put the actual flash drive on the cake XD
my son's band is in need of a good name, I'll be sure to offer him your suggestion :)
funny stuff.
People are really bad at communicating in general. There would be a lot fewer Cake Wrecks (and other misunderstandings) if we could hit the mark somewhere halfway between "read my mind" and: "Let's see... hmm... you know what? I think I'd like something printed on the cake. What do you think? Do you do edible printing on cakes? Yeah? Think that would look okay? I have this picture here. See? I took it at the family reunion last summer in Green Bay. This is Grandpa by the cooler in the striped shirt. If you could crop the picture so it's just him and maybe make it horizontal? with some of the trees in the background? then blow it up realllly big, that would be great. We had a picture cake made of Aunt Lonna in an elf costume last Christmas. Gramps loved it but when he had too many hot buttered rums and dropped it on the dog. We don't let him help with stuff after he's had too much. My husband always takes his keys when he arrives but that usually causes a great big fight that ends up with furniture knocked over, broken glass, and my side of the famiily leaving early, yelling profanities as they get in their car. Two cousins and an aunt on Jim's side still aren't speaking to us or each other from Shirley's wedding. She didn't have a picture cake, but her neighbor did. For a wedding. Can you believe that? And put a pretty border around it with a nice color and in blue icing, write 'Happy 73rd PawPaw'. I'll send my husband in tomorrow to pick it up. But if he's still at the office, my nephew Jordan will come. Don't let him see it because he has a tendency to ruin surprises. He told my daughter Susan about her surprise party and claimed he didn't know he wasn't supposed to tell. I tell you, people just don't know when to shut up. You know?"
Now I'm wondering how many soggy packages you receive that AREN'T "suspicious".
LOL @ Michelle S. I _so_ live with ... er... KNOW that person!
This is worse than the flash drive because the baker could use the excuse "technology impaired". But everyone knows how to use an envelope!
Hey, points for not putting the actual envelope on the cake.
So much for looking on the bright side...
Can we get that wreckerator as the presenter for some award show? It would certainly speed things up. "The winner of the 'somebody who was in some movie' award is...I have no idea -- there's no writing on this envelope! [polite applause] Moving right along..."
How does this person pay any bills? I've seen very few envelopes with explicit instructions printed on the outside.
Safe journey, guys. May every stop exceed your expectations. Every stop for tour purposes, that is. Wouldn't want a red light to exceed expectations for length. You know what I mean...
Sadly, the cake would have been a wreck anyway.
On the bright side....Ghostbusters is back in theaters! Woot!
Has this ever happened to you? You are reading the comments left by all your wonderful fellow Cakewrecks fans and find yourself feeling smug and superior as you notice that someone has spelling mistakes and typos in their comment. 'Poor fool, it must be awful to be so dopey', you think, only to realize that you are reading the comment you left earlier that day.
No? It's just me then? Well, at least it wasn't on a cake.
So, if the person had brought in the photo in a paper bag, this "baker" would have scanned the bag instead and put that on the cake??!? And if it was in a plastic baggie, would they have scanned the photo still in the plastic? ("You didn't tell me to take it out of the bag first...")
VC--if your "well-meaning", frugal relatives didn't mark out those little bars on the bottom of the bill return envelopes before using them for your precious shower invitations, then your friends and family wouldn't have gotten them. Rather the automated mail processor would have sent them to the marked coded entity, so the electric company, cell phone provider, bank, etc. were all invited to your shower instead! :-) Too funny!
Okay, so I'm dying to know WHAT WAS IN THE ENVELOPE?
The sad part is, it probably would have been a lot less effort - and a lot less technologically challenging - to open the envelope and read its contents. Assuming the wreckerator could read.
I wonder what s/he does when a collection agency calls. "Oh, you mean I was supposed to open that bill?"
@ sharyn: YES! YES! YES!... that's not protected by the copiwrite monster, is it? ::Suspiciously Soggy. Sorry, but I think that's already in use ... toddler play group ...
It's hard to tell if people are trying to piss you off or are actually just stupid. You'd think that if it was someone's job to transfer pictures onto cakes they'd have looked inside an envelope or two before but then again, who knows
The wrapping paper comment made me laugh out loud. Great stuff!
Hey! Those pictures were printed at Ritz! I worked there and seeing that box printed on a cake gave me a touch of PTSD.
And there are new Ph.D graduates who can't find work to save their lives, while people who think like this are being HIRED...what's wrong with this picture???
PPPPFF! I was expecting that the counter person smooshed the paper envelope itself down into the icing.
Michelle - I believe that long-winded person you speak of is my mother. No Joke. My sister and I tend to interrupt her and ask "Where's the cheese?" to get her to make her point. Lordy.
I'm going to guess that when the wreckerator cooks frozen pizza, the smoke alarm always goes off and the pizza tastes really strange.
Soggy Suspicious Package? Oh good! So you did get the ice cream cake I sent you!
Love the sperm balloons with the wrong photo.
omg, that's awful. I love this website. It brings me back to the days when I worked with cake decorators that did stuff like this... so sad!
The idea, I believe, was that while everyone stares in awe, horror, amusement, at the scanned envelope, they would fail to see the number of "misses" that were made by the spermloons and the hazy blue streaked white icing would just blend in. Niiiiiiice.
OMG. How can any decorator be so stupid? I am a cake decorator and you KNOW you have to open the envelope to get the picture out!! *facepalm* Also, Why do you suppose that cake is smeared on the bottom left? I hope she got her money back..LOL
LOL@ Michelle S. I get long winded customers like that every day. Sometimes it helps me get an idea of the type of people they are and what they are looking for, for their cake....but eventually I have to butt in, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, did you say white or chocolate for your cake?" and then they forget what they were telling me! :) Fun times in the bakery...
At least the flash drive was well-executed. I can't even say that about this cake.. :(
Can't help but think it must have been a man... What!? You know you have to spell out all the steps for them! lol ;)
Suspiciously Soggy......sounds like the next Ben and Jerry's flavor
It reminds me of the one where the bakery decorated an image of the USB memory stick - instead of looking at the file contained on the USB memory stick.
AMAZING!
sigh... I'm going to be in Richmond on the 20th and Charlotte on the 21st... missing you by something like 12 hours in each location. No Winter Underlined for me :(
I have to say. In all honesty, those are the most welll executed sperm balloons we've seen so far.
Points for the 3-D effect.
the scan isn't even centered on the cake!!!
Well this is a response to "what the eff" I hate to say this but it was probably the PHD moonlighting as a cake decorator! My husband has a PHD and he sometimes takes thinks quite literally! Drives me Crazy!
My older sister once got very upset (she was about 4) at Christmas because her older sister had all kinds of presents and all she had was boxes.
This tragedy was easily remedied, however, and my sister has since learned to open the paper and the box.
Um, not a PhD or even moonlighting as a cake decoder, but isn't *thinks* a verb, and not a noun? Or have I been reading cakewrecks and engrish.com for too long?