Let Them Eat Cake--Or Not

I've been so busy this week with guests, guests and more guests that I haven't had a chance to blog at all. After last weekend's festivities, we had our friends from Germany come and visit us until this morning. Then this afternoon, Per's brother and his family arrived to take in the festivites of the Eurovision contest. Having guests is hard work!

Despite all the stress in the last few weeks in preparation for Keira's weekend, it was all worth it and turned out to be very nice. Everything ran relatively smoothly except for my cake fiasco. Yes, that's right, cake fiasco.

Before I begin my story, I have to explain that cakes are a very important of a Norwegian get together. They are the pride and joy of an event. The Norwegians take great pride in baking th cakes themselves and having a lot of them.

I baked one chocolate cake for Keira's birthday and I baked some pink cupcakes, but I, in no way, baked any cakes on Sunday. I bought a beautiful cream cake, a Norweigan kransekake served with vanilla ice cream and my piece de resistance was supposed to be a French passion fruit cake...all for 17 people.

On Sunday, I sent my niece and the godmother of Keira down to Jerome's to pick up the French cake. When she got there...there was no cake. They had forgotten to bake it!!!

She called me at 12:55pm (lunch is at 1:00pm) and tells me that they forgot to make the cake. And if I want a cake I have to wait one hour for it...which meant that she would have to sit there one hour for it and then drive 40 minutes to my house. Then lunch wouldn't be until 3pm? We couldn't begin without her because she was a godmother. I was SOOO PISSED.

I got on the phone and practically ripped the waiter's head off. How could they forget to make the cake? How dare they tell the godmother that the cake wouldn't be ready for an hour? They had better figure out a way to make me a cake and get it here in time. It wasn't acceptable that they could forget something so important on such an important day...blah blah blah.

First, he just kept saying he was sorry. Well, sorry wasn't going to get me a cake. What was he going to do about it? He said that he would call me back in 5 minutes. Within 5 minutes, he called me back and told me that they had a frozen cake..and I said that the Christening lunch was now. What was I supposed to do with a frozen cake? Then, he said that he would call me back. He calls back and his next solution is that he will give me 17 little passion fruit cakes, but at least they weren't frozen. Since I didn't have a choice, I had to say ok to that, although I was still pissed. He called back again in another 5 minutes to tell me that he had a cake for me but, but how would he get it to me? By that time, Stine (the godmother) had already left. I told him that that wasn't really my problem. He would have to order a taxi and have it delivered to my house and I expected that he would pay for the taxi. Well, we had to pay for the taxi and then I would take the bill into the bakery.

I visited the bakery owner yesterday to get my money back for the hotel and also mentioned all the trouble that he put me through and I expected that he would do something about the price of the cake. Keep in mind that I had already paid for the cake when I ordered it and in reality, I didn't want my money back or any money back for that matter. What I really wanted from him was a genuine "I'm sorry" and at least a token of remorse..Like maybe can I buy you a cup of coffee? or maybe next time you come in, you can have lunch on the house or something like that. Not expensive. Just to show he was really sorry.

First I told the guy that I was promised that Keira's name was going to be on the cake and the guy on the phone said he knew exactly how to spell it and so on, but when the cake showed up, there was no name on it. It wasn't even specially made for her. The owner went into the kitchen and came back with a piece of flat white chocolate with her name spelled on it. He told me that they had done it and here it was. Can you believe that? What good is that supposed to do me when it wasn't on the cake?

Then we started talking about the price of the taxi. He almost had a heart attack when he saw the taxi bill. Where did I live? He asked. There was NO WAY he was going to give me anything for the cake. I should even be happy that he was giving me money for the taxi. The taxi was more expensive than the cake. I have to tell you that I was besides myself I was seeing Red. He made it seem that it was my fault that the taxi delivered the cake. I told him that the godmother was not going to wait one hour for the cake because that is what I was told. He said no, only five minutes. I repeated again, like I was talking to a complete imbecile, that that is not what I was told. It was one hour. he kept shaking his head and telling me that I should be happy that I got the mone for the taxi and the cake only took five minutes.

I mean, really, what shitty, ridiculous bullshit service is that? Trying to turn around the situation and make it like my fault?

I think that he thought I was trying to make it about the refund for the cake. But, i was really pissed off that he was trying to make it like it was my fault that there was such a high taxi bill and that I was trying to take money from him. This all had to do with prinipal and bad service. I wanted a real "I'm sorry" and not his stupid money.

Anyway, I told him that I thought that he gave awful customer service and I would make sure that everyone I knew would be told about what a bad place this was. He just looked at me and told me that he had given me the taxi money and that his conscience was clear and I could go do whatever i wanted to do and didn't need to come back. You gotta love that, right?

Asshole.