Soooo...we all have some good days and bad days right? Well I kinda had a roller coaster week last week!
In case you were hiding under a rock...I shared a real "tragedy" of an experience about a celeb's mum throwing her daughter's celeb-status weight about when complaining about a Pink Wink cake she ordered for her daughter's 40th, that was made and delivered exactly as described, to try and get a refund and a replacement, and it ended up in a bit of a viral fracas over on Instagram and Facebook. Here's what it looked like on IG:
And our usually sleepy facebook page was burning up as well:
I posted it just before popping out for our wedding anniversary lunch date and when I got back and checked my phone I was floored by the notifications and reaction - a mix of outrage, support and hilarity, but it was totally overwhelming!
The comment that won the internet though:
"Don't You Know Who My Daughter Is?"
We can't always please everybody, that's a given, but we do our best in trying to do so and I am so proud of our team everyday, seeing and tasting the amazing, and super detailed birthday cakes we deliver to happy and appreciative, often loyal, customers. I know I've called dodgy freebie blaggers and crooked customers out before, and we aren't the only ones to have such experiences but it was the first time I've ever experienced a "Don't you know whose mother I am?" kind of ridiculous situation.
The Long and Short of It
The silly "celeb mum" proclamation was followed by offers of "free advertising" and threats of celeb daughter sharing her "disappointment with 300k followers" depending on a refund and replacement. All this over horrendously tedious phone calls, with our driver held awkwardly hostage during the mind-boggling and vile barrage of nonsense - "the cake is red, not pink, celeb daughter HATES red (there is NO red on the cake...), the doughnuts are soft and not like normal doughnuts (normal ones are hard?!), the chocolate message is chocolate, the decor looks scattered on top (yes...err like pretty much ALL our cakes...it's called "aesthetics") blah blah and liberally interjected with "my daughter is a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers" at least once every 30 seconds.
When you're in that situation, it's very hard to stay cool, even more so when you're 8 months pregnant and the customer was clearly well-versed in such tactics. I decided to refund and take the cake back as soon as she threatened "sharing disappointment" as entitled behaviour and spurious complaints don't get rewarded with free cake. Nor does it get a refund AND replacement off the back of "review ransom". We gave the cake to our kind driver's mum instead who has been a bit poorly as of late and she loved it (and thought it was pink).
Don't Be a D!ck
But to every cloud of turd there's a silver lining! The insane reaction to my post was worth every second of the tirade. The loss on that cake was more than made up for by a huge increase in followers and possibly got us way more social media exposure than any post by said celeb would have.
While I was bracing myself over the weekend as this unfolded for the 300k strong army of fans to troll me I was surprised to see just a few boringly predictable comments along the lines of "unprofessional, I can't believe they treat customers that way, this is a blatant PR stunt"...yawn. All I know from experience is that the "devil's advocates" in these scenarios are probably the same type of customer that pulls this sort of rubbish to get their way with businesses, so best avoided anyway, or are incredibly basic in their understanding of business - you couldn't pay enough to even plan a PR stunt like this, and if we only ever had dodgy customers or "treated all customers like this" we would be out of business.
It's important to remember we get back what we put out in the world, and in general, "Don't be a d!ck" is a very good life motto.
Deeper Shades of Blue
So in between the perfect storm of distraction we also created one of our most magical cakes - the Fantasy Mermaid cake, in all those lovely deeper shades of sea-blue ;) I start every new design with a sketch and pairing flavour and texture combinations which the team then brings to life, and this cake literally took my breath away with its under-the-sea inspired gorgeousness.
We frosted the chocolate sponge layers with Swiss meringue buttercream and dripped pink ganache over it. Those dreamy ombre swirls and stars piped on like coral, oyster macarons, meringues and a shimmery fondant mermaid's tail diving in...I can't cope!
Life is a Roller Coaster, Just Gotta Ride It
A proper roller coaster of a week that totally wiped me out as we are TEN days away from my due date....ahhhhh. It was possibly one of the craziest examples of delusional sense of entitlement I have ever come across. And what were the chances of it happening exactly 2 years from the date we had that #bloggerblackmail malarkey go viral...again on the day of our anniversary...I do wonder.
Lots of love,
Reshmi xoxo
ps: I'm team S-Club 7 anyway... ;)
Bobby Langley
August 22, 2017
Oh my word! You should write a book! You and your cakes are amazing! If only I could afford one! But as good as getting one I love looking at your works of art. Good luck with your baby xxx love from Bobby (Stocksbridge Sheffield)