Yesterday, Larry, my long-suffering and beleaguered boss, was filling in for his boss, running the store, when a notorious cake customer came in with a complaint and a demand for a price reduction on the cake she ordered. It is common, for welfare mothers and grandmothers to buy at least one large, decorated cake per month with their food stamps [EBT food, these days]. The decorated cakes are either topped with icing printed photos of loved ones or decorated according to catalogued patterns for iconic pop culture figures, like R2-D2, CP3O, Oprah, etc. This lady targets the newest cake decorator and places an order for something outside the catalogue, in this case Yoda—the green humanoid Jedi of douche bag legendry—knowing full well that the young lady will not be able to replicate the image by hand without a pattern. She then complains, tries to get the employee fired or disciplined, and demands a 50-80% discount.

I thought Larry parried Mamma Cake’s charge of poor customer service well:

“You know, this is not in the catalogue and you did not even speak to our top cake decorators to find out if it was possible, but went to a new girl. Now, we can stand here and look across that counter all day, and we will not see Michael Angelo, Leonardo Di Vinci or even Goya, pass behind the counter to take up an icing tube. If you want professional art, done freestyle from a picture, go to Woodlea Bakery, and they’ll make you a cake with Yoda’s face on it for a hundred and fifty dollars. I realize I am in charge, but I can’t paint this image with icing any more than you can, and I cannot demand art from a bakery clerk.”

Yes, when your job truly sucks and you are lucky enough to be a grocery store manager, you have numerous such opportunities to discuss the meaning of subsidized life with the soulless savages that exist in that matrix, that pinnacle of human achievement towards which all of the labors of the ancients and the scientists of the modern age propelled us, into an age when fools who believe themselves to be free are taxed to pay for the venal gluttony of beasts more vile than any horror that crawled forth from a Mesozoic swamp.