Monday, October 12, 2009

My Friend's Bad Day

A friend of mine recently started making cakes out of her home.  I'm a little visa commercial kind of jealous, I'll admit.  Rent on a commercial kitchen-$2000, taxes and fees owed to the state and county and city governments-$1000, electricity-$500 - cost of owning your own business-priceless( or a lot of freakin' cookies)!  And maybe it's legal in Ohio-even if you have two dogs.  Who's to say?! 


But I don't have to deal with some of the little problems she has to.  Take for instance the fact that she has to do everything herself.  She is her own dishwasher, baker, and finisher.  I do all of these myself, too. But I have a HUGE three compartment sink to be my own dishwasher in and all she gets is a little 'mom' automatic dishwasher.


She has to get five 10 lb. bags of sugar at the store.  I can get one 50 lb. bag of sugar and carry it to the bin all in one shot, flour too. 


Since she works out of her house, she also has to be doing the laundry and cleaning at the SAME time she is baking. When I am baking, that's all I have to do.  I get to wait until I get home at night or for my day off to do the laundry and cleaning.


She only gets paid in cash AND she doesn't even have a bank account.  Poor her.  It must be a real nightmare for her come tax time.  With my business account and my financial records, tax time for me is a breeze.  The government knows exactly how much to tax me.


And I have never had a bad day like she had a bad day the other day.  She had to deliver a two tier shower cake about 30 minutes away from her.  She used to work for a very busy bakery.  So even though she works out of her house, she has transported a lot of cakes.  I would be more scared of finding a dog hair in one of her cakes than of her not safely getting a cake to its destination. But this time when she got to the house and opened up the cooler !!!! two pieces of cake laid where there once was one. This has never happened to me.  Only because I am lucky. Like I said about her-dog hair.  What did you do I asked her.  She cried she said.  It was the only thing she could do-the break was so broken.  We all carry repair kits, but for small rips, not pothole size gashes.  You did NOT let the client see you crying I asked.  Annoyed, she answered me that this was no speeding ticket that she was trying to get herself out of or something to make her husband forget the $500 pair of shoes she just got 'on sale.'  No, these were real tears, big crocodile ones that wouldn't stop.  And again I am lucky here because I probably don't have feelings that run that deep.  And then, I asked, trying to keep my phrases limited so as not to annoy.  The client took the cake. They wanted to eat it (nobody is passing up broken cake!) even if looking at the cake was not that pleasant.  My friend offered a refund as there was no time to make another a cake.  The client told her to refund everything except for the cost of the ingredients.  What?  Did I just hear you right I said.  Even though I'm all Visa kind of jealous of my friend I was a little taken aback.  I would rather offer the whole refund than just the cost of the ingredients.  If I go to a restaurant and I get a flaming disaster of an entree they would comp it, right?  They wouldn't tell me I have to pay for 4 oz of chicken, 1/2 of a potato, 6 oz of butter(just checking to see if you were still paying attention), etc...And if I told you the ingredients cost 25% of what I just charged you, would you believe me?  Probably not, so it's best if you just take everything back. I told all of this to my friend.  What happened?  My friend told her how much the ingredients cost and yes, the client said she would pay it but no she couldn't believe that's how much the ingredients were. My friend sent her a check for the whole cake.  It's a win-win for my friend.  She said that way at least when she's telling all of her friends what happened they know she got all of her money back and that my friend uses really good ingredients!  So no matter what kind of jealous I get at her that is why she will always be my friend.