Wednesday
Aug062008
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
August 6, 2008 Remember the cake that started it all? Of course you do. Here are a few more cakes that show you can know English without understanding the language.
I especially love how the decorator tried to cram in some quotation marks - which, ironically, would have been the correct usage for once.
Sometimes stupidity takes so much more effort.
The instructions were "Write 'Happy Birthday Calvin' in green," as in green icing. I'm surprised the decorator didn't write it like this: "Gre - Happy Birthday Calvin - En".
Today's Wrecks provided by: Erin M., Debbie M., and Emily G.
Reader Comments (52)
I didn't read all the comments, so maybe this was already mentioned...
It wasn't pointed out that " Birthday's " is incorrect grammar. It should just be "Birthdays"
Sarah wrote, "I'm surprised this could happen once, let alone time after time, everywhere around the world. How does this happen???"
Only in America, Sarah. Let me assure you that these types of cake wrecks do not happen everywhere around the world. I do not live in America and I have never seen cakes like these in my country's bakeries and nor in bakeries on my travels abroad. The question should be, "Why does it not happen elsewhere?" Could you, for example, ever imagine these coming out of a French patisserie? The French have too much pride in their culinary traditions to allow it. Another example? I doubt you would see mistakes like these in Scandinavia, countries that have some of the highest educational standards in the world and pay their workers appropriates salaries. If you pay your workers well, as an employer you will have a vested interest in ensuring your workers receive appropriate training to do a good job. We have a saying in my family, "If you pay peanuts you'll get monkeys." So without really trying I've thought of three reasons why this particular type of cake wreck does not happen everywhere around the world: pride, educational standards and appropriate remuneration. So many of the commentators on this site openly admit to reading the blog at work. Let's estimate that these workers spend 15 minutes a day reading Cakewrecks. That's one and a quarter hours each week, and sixty-five hours of unproductive time in a year. LOL that's a lot of unproductive time workers are being paid for. I'm sure it's related, but I just can't figure out how. Maybe the bakery workers are goofing off too and then have to rush their work, leading to mistakes they wouldn't normally make.
America, keep the wrecks coming. They are very entertaining.
Ella Mc