We've Been Scrooged!
August 13, 2012 Remember how Scrooge McDuck always said to "work smarter, not harder?" (No? Aw, go play with your pokey balls, youngsters. AND GET OFF MY LAWN.)
Well, just imagine what ol' Scrooge would have to say about these
"Thanks, Sandi Make the S into Dollar Signs $"
Sadly, this next directive failed on all counts:
And to think: all she wanted was Happy Birthday, arched like a rainbow, with the middle clear for a candle. You know, nice and simple.
;)
This is how a wreckerator shows off. "See? You SAID 'white writing' and I WROTE 'white writting' in white writing. I even threw an extra 't' in, no charge."
I think ol' Scrooge would have been proud of this one, though:
;)
After all, it IS a lot easier to write "blue anchor" than actually draw one. And judging by the amount of wrecks like this I see photographed at home, SOMEBODY is obviously buying them. Why, you'll be swimming in your own vault of pennies in no time, wreckers!
Thanks to Leslie S., April B., Ashantae, Kristi L., & Ellen S. for the fowl advice.
Reader Comments (35)
Sung to “You Don’t Know Me” by Ray Charles
You give your cake to me
And you say, "Make it so."
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think it will be swell
But you don't know me
No, you don't know that I
Won't get the S just right
I'll kill off your friend Gail
You see, I'm not too bright
"Happy Birthday" won't bend
You'll just have to pretend
Nope, you don't know me
See, I never learned the art of making cakes
Look at my work, you'll see it's true
I never try. You let your chance go by
The chance of a nice cake or two
So, I'll give your cake to you
And you'll let out a sigh
But, see, the writing's white
With two Ts side-by-side
I wrote "Blue Anchor" well
It was that or "Seashell"
Why won't you pay me?
Thank you for printer!
Can make own cake inscriptions;
Can't thank you enough!
Some may look at the order and say "Why?" A good wreckorator sees it and says "Why not?"
Thanks so much for the Scrooge McDuck shout out. Been a fan of his and the duck man (Carl Barks) for over 50 yrs! @Sharyn: Terrific! your best one yet!!
Posted before I saw Haiku Joy's comment. @HJ...love your poetry!
Welcome back, Haiku Joy!! When does school start?
Gosh, I've missed it here. So glad to be back.
What is with all of the rogue dots on the brown cake? Does the wreckerator not know how to dot an 'i'.
The last cake is really cute - too bad about the blue anchor!!
OMG Haku Joy is back :D :D :D Sharryn lolol as usual XD. Those cakes, i wonder if some people know how to think...
You know you read often when your thought is, "Hey at least the flip flops look like flip flops."
Welcome back Haiku Joy!!!
Literal LOLs never fail to make me smile.
And now, a limerick explaining why these cakes get brought home unfixed:
When asked if he'd fix a few lines
the baker said "I'm not inclined,
I wrote what they said."
with a shake of his head
"Some people can't make up their mind!"
(Hi Haiku Joy! Glad you're back!)
Well for starters the flip flops look like they used actual child's flip flops on top of the cake...hmmm.
What these wreckerators are doing is working harder not smarter! They are making an extra effort out of laziness, or stupidity, they they wouldn't have to if they did it right!
I wonder if they are going to serve a ship full of 'ice cream' with those cakes?
Cute, zoomom! I have such trouble with meter, but you make it look natural. Well-done!
Am I the only one who noticed that the "Arch" thing also fits in with the Scrooge McDuck theme? As in "A(r)ch! The Beagle Boys ha' broken into me Money Bin!" Yeah, I'm probably the only one.
And a question for folks who have been reading this blog longer than I:
Has a cake decorating
professionaljob-haver ever come forward in the comments and tried to explain why mistakes like these are perfectly understandable? I just really, really want to hear someone seriously explain how a mistake like this happens, and how no one catches it, and how these cakes are presented to the buyers with a straight face.The only think I can think of is that it involves people who do not speak English as a first language.
(Note: I am not anti-foreigner or anti-immigrant. I have massive amounts of respect for people who can cope with living in a new place with a new language and culture. I couldn't do that, which is one of the reasons I abandoned foreign languages in college in favor of zoology. Animals don't laugh at your accent.)
Hey, maybe "blue anchor" is Megan's nick-name. It could happen.
Sharyn, it starts next week, which is seven days too soon. At least.
@ Trekkie Gal--I think the rogue dots that are dotting the i's on the brown one are supposed to resemble paw prints, like the orange one in the middle.
Of course if they had done the cake correctly, there would only be one i to dot rather than the multitude they put on.
@Trekkie Gal - the wreckerator got all cute and carried the pawprint forward to dot all the "i"s. This must have been for a school and the pawprint is their logo (both my boys have pawprints - one is a Cougar and one is a Bobcat). If it wasn't for the "white", I'd have given the DECORATOR "two paws up!" for creativity and staying on theme.
Those have to be real flip flops; who would put SHOES on a cake? I can only hope they've never actually been worn.
@Monica~ "cake decorating job haver" almost did me in. "Animals don't laugh at your accent" made me have to clean my monitor. Thanks...
Thanks for the laugh!
I once made my coworker write on a cake just "happy birthday" but it was just not good writing. I don't think the customer wasn't too impressed, but kind of felt bad about it... I did tell my coworker she did well, though :S
all is right with my world:
Sharyn's still awesome
Haiku Joy and zoomom are back
Monica's funnies: A(r)ch and animals don't laugh at your accent
BADKarma: this makes me wonder what other nicknames you've had, hmmmmmm?
thanks, J&J(thoJ), for making surviving a Monday* worthwhile
*without killing anyone
Welcome back, Haiku Joy! Just FYI, my son's school starts Wednesday 8/14. Freshman start the day before. Too soon! :-(
@Monica: No, no one has ever been able to explain the "thinking" behind these wrecks. I'm not sure we'd be able to stand it if they could. I'd just like to know how long some of these people have been employed, and how long they remained employed after they did this.
I'm finding it deliciously ironic that the "Gail and Farewell" cake has indeed gone away. (There WAS a 5th cake earlier, right? Or did I do too much LDS in the 60's?)
Barbara Anne -- I'm glad Jen and John saved your Monday. Otherwise, I was going to have to figure out how to talk Theardare through bailing you out...
I am cake decorator and honestly I don't know where half of these come from but I can assure nothing like that would ever come out of the bakery I work for ( yes i work at a grocery store). Part of the problem is unclear cake order forums which confuses people and a lot of it is just poorly trained cake decorators. Cake decorator get legit no training. You get one class with a cake tech and if you are lucky you might have another cake decorator to learn from at your store. If you don't than its a lot of figuring things out on your own. A lot of people think its really easy but in all honestly it isn't. Most cake decorators have so much to do that it's not that we are lazy as we are so busy that mistakes happen. I have made mistakes before to which I either catch them or the customer does and I fix it or make a new cake for them. Again it's not being lazy as it is being busy. There is a lot excepted out of a cake decorator.
Welcome back Haiku Joy and zoomom! We're glad you're back with us.
As for Megan's cake, those flip flops look as though they COULD be plastic flotsam - there appears to be a clear plastic base around the flops. At least, that's what I'm hoping they are, rather than actual flip flops...
Lurker de-lurking (at least momentarily) to say I love the blog, and the comments, and particularly that Sharyn managed to get not one, but two, Star-Trek references in her posts (unless there are more that I missed...). I like to wait to look at the blog until there are some of the comments since I love reading them all - near EPCOTS and all - but this time it looks like I managed to miss a cake (Gail Farewell???).
The flip-flops is a kit cake. The flip-flops are made from plastic and have a plastic thin base they sit in so they aren't directly on the cake.
I came to read the comments because I saw this post early yesterday morning before comments started up. I couldn't remember what I thought I might need to read the comments for until I got almost to the bottom. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 'GAIL AND FAREWELL' CAKE??? I could not figure out what that one was even SUPPOSED to be, so I was hoping the comments would fill me in.
@Sharyn it was a close call but Theardare scares me worse than Mondays!
I wonder what the order forms for these bakeries look like. Maybe there ought to be a clear difference between 'text on cake' and 'images on cake' and 'further instructions'. Maybe banning orders by phone would also work, or else putting it rough an automated voice detection system.
:). I love the wrecks, of course, but I just had a moment of compulsion to figure out why this happens so often.
Sadly that last cake
http://www.decopac.com/catImages/XL/33156_xl.jpg This is what it should look like
Has anyone seen Theardare?! Craig, check around the bunker! If there's no sign of Theardare, we should check Karyn's place, STAT! (Or not. It's not like he's going after Andrea or one of the other CW regulars...)