Member-only story
Pandemic Life
The Great Crooked Cake Crisis
Are You Displacing Your Rage in the Age of COVID?
My friend Amy owns a bakery that specializes in custom cakes. Her cakes are exceptional. Fabulous. Each one a work of art. A customer, lets call her Karen, recently ordered a cake for her 50th birthday.
On the day of the party, Karen’s husband came to the bakery, picked up the cake, paid for it and left.
End of story?
Alas, no.
Several days later, Karen phoned the bakery to complain. “You ruined my birthday,” she told Amy. “I hated the cake!”
“I’m so sorry,” said Amy. “What was wrong with it?”
“The design was messed up!”
“What was wrong with the design?”
“A line was crooked!”
“That’s it? One line?”
“It was crooked.”
Out of Line
People are dying on ventilators, Amy thought, And you’re bent out of shape because a line on your birthday cake was crooked?
“When you pick up a custom cake,” she told Karen, “if you aren’t happy with the design, we can fix it. Our cake designers are right in the shop. They’ll drop everything and make sure we get…
