Thursday, March 4, 2010

Covering All the Bases

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Because you can never be too safe, that's why.

Famous for their Dance Dance Revolution play-offs...offs.


You tech guys know a PEBKAC when you see one, right?
That's "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Cake."

By the way, here's a tip from a former tech support phone operator*: if you're ever told you have an I.D. ten T. error, get a second opinion. Unless, of course, you're using your CD-ROM tray as a cup holder or mouse as a foot pedal**. Then it's an accurate assessment.

* That would be me.
**Yes, it's happened.


Moving on...

If only this had said "Patti Love heart <3 you"...
then it still wouldn't have made any sense.


"Let's see...I could write 'Amanda' in the Happy Birthday bubble, OR..."


Poor Adamwithblueflowers. Grade school musta been murder.


Ashley R., Tara C., Simon P., Amanda L., & Dana G., I would like to thank Ashley R., Tara C., Simon P., Amanda L., & Dana G. In italics.

- Related Wreckage: The Literal Letter of the Law

Jules AF said...

I thought it was going to say "Adam with the blue..." something else that rhymes with walls.... I'm glad it didn't. Yikes.

Ali said...

WOW just horrid!!! Love your blog! xo

Taylor@MyOlderBrothers said...

I'm a former tech support operator too! I'd suggest we start a support line, but that would probably just make it worse.

Elizabeth said...

I D Ten T, haven't used that in a while, although now that I think about it, it could have come in handy lately.

agirlinherkitchen.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Amanda is a young woman with Multiple personalites, it is also her stripper personality "Bubbles" birthday, so they didn't know who to make the cake to. That's the story right?

Fluffy Cow said...

Hooray for Tech Support!!! hee hee

And a Vappy Birthday to Jim.

kayak said...

Those "edible" (quote marks intentional) paper designs kind of gross me out. But if you're gonna use them, at least smooth out the wrinkles and start over if you tear it!

wv: subste: These designs are no subste for artistic decorations.

Unknown said...

I "love heart" this blog.

Gary said...

That creased "Amanda Happy Birthday Bubble" has a certain classical lyricism about it.

Gary said...

Oops, I should have said, "That creased AND TORN 'Amanda Happy Birthday Bubble'" ...


WV: eyboxyie. I'm trying to get yestarday's cake image out of my mind, but it seems to be stuck on my retinas with eyboxyie.

Stacey said...

ID10T! :)

Anonymous said...

Here's a good one: It says to press any key, but The ID10T can't find the 'any' key! Lol when I did tech support, thank god I didn't get any real bad ones, cuz I wouldn't have contained the laughs...

Anonymous said...

Jen, we love heart you!

DameRuth said...

Ah, Adam With Blue Flowers -- Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' lesser-known brother . . . She got a song, but at least he got a cake!

Kore said...

Ooooh, do I detect an old-school Homestar Runner reference? Can I love you guys even more than I already do? I do believe the answer is "AaAaAaAa! I'm forever your girl!"

Unknown said...

Maybe the wreckorator thought he was Native American...Adam With-Blue-Flowers?

The Shitty Astrologer said...

I bite my thumb at these cakes!

Becky said...

I love the manly blue flowers on the cake for Jim.

Genny said...

Found you through SoCalFruGal... so glad I did. Thanks for the laughs!

Genny

Anonymous said...

Bahaha, please tell me the CD tray as a cup holder was in reference to The IT Crowd!? Please! That would make me so happy. "I feel trapped, like a moth in a bath."-Moss (If only I had a "moth ladder!")

WV: Brapho: Brapho Wreckies, Brapho... you just keep making them worse! Quite the feat!

Anonymous said...

gotta love the literal minded and redundant.

poor Amanda. that looked like a really cool cake with the retro silhouette. too bad they mucked up the inscription. and the cake got a crack in the icing on the cute silhouette. and the screenprinted form apparently got wrinkled or didn't fit, because the blue bar on the side seems to be from another design that snuck onto this cake.

could a little white icing at least patched THAT up, decorator? and a little airbrushing fill in the white crack on the silhouette so the girl doesn't look like she's splitting in half or getting struck by lightning?

but you spelled bubble, and rewrote Happy Birthday. so I'm wasting my time here. lest I repeat myself.

Deborah said...

Happy Birthday Adam With Blue Flowers is clearly your next t-shirt.

jo said...

Maybe it's a cake for twins, Amanda, and Bubble, her stripper sister. or maybe she's just an airhead.

I like your theory though, Anon @ 9:38. of course the decorator also misspelled Bubbles name. but your theory fits the crack in the icing on the girl, as if her personality was split.

this isn't a wreck, it's a work of GENIUS!

Unknown said...

Maybe Adam With Blue Flowers is just his Native American name.

Josin L. McQuein said...

I can beat your cup holder.

A guy calls because his computer is making a weird noise. When asked where the noise is coming from, he says the floppy drive. (Yes, floppies - you remember those, right?) When told to eject the disk, he says he can't. A few more questions get to the source of his trouble: he tried to use one of the REALLY old floppies (5 inch?) in the regular 3.5 inch floppy slot. He thought scissors would accomplish this.

jackie31337 said...

I'm a technical writer, but part of my job is to review tech support requests to see what users are having problems with, and what could be improved in the documentation.

I think tech support requests give kind of a skewed picture of user intelligence. You have to figure that the users who are actually competent and/or able to read a manual generally don't need tech support. That leaves the really dumb ones, and the unhandled exceptions.

ShannonD said...

Here's another tech support acronym for you...
PICNIC
Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.

Goof said...

Ah the art of redundancy.

Lauren Borquez said...

With blue flowers :)

Anonymous said...

True story from my call center days: I had a older gentleman who called because he was having problems entering his credit card into the computer. After a few minutes I realized he was inserting the physical credit card into the diskette drive. As if it was an ATM. I had to mute the call while I got my hysterical laughing under control.

Anonymous said...

You are hilarious, I can't believe someone else sees the world as I do. ahhh too funny, with an exclamation mark.

Alana said...

My grandma used to have a neighbor that every time she mentioned her she didn't just call her Oogie (her actual name!), but always called her Oogie Acrossthehall. Maybe Adam is like that. His name is Adam Withblueflowers. Could be a Native American name.

stitchedwithcolor said...

No, i'm convinced that the crack running down the middle of Amanda/Bubbles' silhouette isn't a mistake so much as an artistic choice.

You see, the decorator knows about amanda's secret double life and the late night performances as Bubbles, and as a deeply religious person, is morally offended by them. This wasn't just a job; it was an important opportunity to tell all of Amanda's friends the truth. So the decorator put on both names, Then changed the bubble into a storm cloud of truth, complete with lightning strike. It's a simple easy way to say, "Happy birthday Amanda! God knows about Bubbles, and will strike you down for your late night striping."

Kit Watson said...

Adam with blue flowers would be a great band name.

Silhouette said...

But the keyboard is awe inspiring. All those teeny dot/keys...and somewhat accurate for a row or two.

Robin said...

<3
Less than three
I less than three these wrecks!

Laura Sue said...

Can't read your blog at work. Between you and your commenters, I laugh out loud too often. And double over unable to stop laughing. Doesn't make a good impression with the boss. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds younger brother." OMG.

Anonymous said...

The literal ones are my favorite.

Newlywed Chefette said...

A-hahahahaha! After the PEBKAC thing I was thinking, "Hmmm, that's right up there with those ID10T errors so-and-so was telling me about..." LOVE that you put that in there! :)
(saw a cake case out of the corner of my eye yesterday, and if I hadn't been under the weather, I absolutely would have scouted for potential wrecks!)

Dan Bradbury said...

Here is one that us hardware guys like to use when a computer is brought to us and nothing seems wrong with it physically.

SBKAC = Short Between Keyboard And Chair.

Anonymous said...

Dame Ruth: you stole my exact thought!

Norkio said...

Some of those actually look like the cake was done correctly, then someone came along and wrecked 'em. For instance, Amanda's cake looked fine before Fred-the-decorator came over and wrote all the instructions. Adam's cake clearly has two different hands writing the words. I guess people can really be stupid.

Debbi said...

Um ... why does the right side of Amanda's cake look like Bounty paper towels??? Enlarge it, and you will see exactly what I am talking about.

Anonymous said...

Before you post another cake like "Adam with Blue Flowers", would you please give us a warning. Something like ... "Projectile Beverage Warning. Protect hardware and chair."

Tricia

Nairn said...

Heh, we've had to invent a new term at work since everyone got wise to ID10T and PEBKAC so we came up with PICNIC errors.

Problem In Chair, Not In Computer

;-)

john (the hubby of Jen) said...

Debbi,

You are absolutely right. I didn't even notice it. Jen and I are sitting in the office and we both just opened it on our respective computers. And she has no clue either. Good catch.

john

DMackendrick said...

Adam with the Blue Flowers sounds like some kind of hippie name or a Joni Mitchell song...Is anyone else concerned that Amanda seems to be cracking under the strain of embarrassment?

Linda K said...

Is there a way to find out where these cakes have come from? If not the actual bakery names, possibly a city/state location?
LindaK

Stephanie said...

As my dad likes to say, it's the Department of Redundancy Department. :P

Sherry Lewis said...

It's just so hard to believe these are real! It frightens me a little :)

Confessions of a Closet Hoarder but you can call me Judy said...

When my husband worked at a hardware store as a teen 30 years ago, they'd use the PA system, if they had an issue with a customer. "We need a manager on register one please. We have an ID Ten T". It cracked me up when I first heard him tell it, and I still get a kick out of it. :)

You know..that would make a really good cake! :D

Anonymous said...

I work in tech support now at a law firm. You know why they charge so much? ID10T error comes up a TON!!!

Zoey said...

I just don't understand how many folks decorating cake would not understand the difference between instructions and the actual words on a cake. I am also scratching my head on how many of these cake claiming to be professionally done look like a child made them. I am scared for humanity...

Unknown said...

I've never posted before, but have been a fan of this site for a while now. I couldn't help posting today. Jen, your comments are the best, and they absolutely make the cakes even funnier. "in italics" has me in a fit of giggles at the moment.

WideAwakeWife said...

I was helping to maintain a password protected website and a user complained that she was receiving an error when creating her new account. It kept saying that her username was taken, but that couldn't be right because she's hadn't created an account for the site before and that was her name on the internet. I love users!

Krista said...

I love this web site. Working in a bakery i know things can go wrong sometimes but damn!!

Anonymous said...

The Adam one looks fake. The handwriting for Happy Birthday doesn't match the Adam blue flowers part at all. The angle and spacing are entirely different.

It would be about the best cake wreck ever if it were real.

ann said...

Maybe Adam had pleuroses and needed to feel better.

john (the hubby of Jen) said...

Anon @ 4:26,

It's not. The handwriting is the same. When you decorate a cake and you start running out of room, you start cramming.

john

Anonymous said...

In Scotland, a ♥ is not called a heart, it's called a "love heart"... maybe that's what they wanted on Patti's cookie?

Anonymous said...

Love the computer cake. My hubby is a computer programmer and believe it or not, his name is Jim and today is his birthday.
The errors are also called PICNIC - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer (or in this case, "Cake"). I've heard the IDIOT error, but I've heard it called "One D Ten T"...same thing (1D10T).
Esther

Anonymous said...

These are so funny. Who knew you could find so much material from a cake.

Sparky said...

My boyfriend is a tech support operator! It astounds me the sorts of things people call about.

I've heard the mouse as a foot pedal thing too. And a lot of "help, my tv menu is in spanish and I can't change it back because it's in spanish."

The one that really gets me though, is when he was working as a tech support operator for Cox Communications (cable, internet, phone) and was called by a man claiming his computer didn't work because the screen was black. While he was trying to explain to the man the monitor was off, the customer lost his temper and shot the screen with an actual gun.

"There, now it's really broken," he said, and hung up.

Graham said...

I am personally disturbed by the twine that seems to be holding Amanda's skull and spine together. Wouldn't a steel rod have been more suitable?

SiriusSchwartz said...

The written instruction wrecks are my all time favorites!!! No matter how many of these you post, I will laugh, chortle, and guffaw. Loudly.

Mary Connealy said...

I propose a law

DUI

Decorating Under the Influence

There can be no other explanation.
You could lose your license to bake.

Anonymous said...

Good call on the paper towel. Would that help apply in any way? And have you seen Amanda's foot? Small mishappen!!

Anonymous said...

What's the black X under Adam's spray? Chocolate...chips? A dead fly on the order form?


WV: scramet. "I can't fit the whole name on."
"Scramet."

Priscilla said...

My 3 yr old saw me reading your blog and now wants a carrot with a baby on top on her next birthday cake!!

lbgriffin said...

Whomever made the last cake...I'd love to see them do one for "Devil with a Blue Dress."

Marie said...

Ok remind me again why people pay for these things?? Is it to die of laughter when they get them home or is it because they fear the decorator may come and hunt them down for hating on their "work"? Dying of laughter just looking at some of those especially the Adam with blue flowers.. man poor guy..

Natacha said...

"Adam with Blue Flowers"... Haha... Sometimes it just makes me wonder if some cake decorators understand english at all.

Steph said...

My sister put me onto your blog,I couldn't help myself and had to read all of it in one go!
I'm an icecream cake maker in Australia and see all kind of mistakes from the staff at work... this cracks me up and brightens my day.
I can definitely relate to quite a few of the wrecks...and cover ups, the girls will try anything!
My favourites are definitely the litteral translations of the messages on the cakes!
Keep up the great work and hope I never see any of my cakes on here!

Jolette said...

This is positively fantastic! And I thought I had trouble with my name...

Jane said...

LOL the I.D.Ten T error message is officially one of my new favourite things! My husband used to be a software tester, he'll get a real kick out of it too!

Wendy said...

I know Adam Withblueflowers. He's a very sweet man. Native American.

Anonymous said...

That is supposed to read Patti loves Heart, you? - her family sings "Barracuda" instead of "Happy Birthday" to her.

cyn said...

At least Adam got blue flowers on his cake. There have been some wrecks requesting a specific color that, aside from being spelled out in the inscription, was not found anywhere on the cake.

He should consider himself lucky. =)

BADKarma! said...

The "Big-A$$ Cake" is actually kind of funny. Almost witty even. Assuming it was intentional, of course...

Destinie said...

These decorators must have had some I.D. ten T. problems.

my dad works with computers at baosso america and they got a call from a guy wondering why his computer
wouldnt turn on when his electricity shut off.....all i could say was wow.

Anonymous said...

OOOH OOOH I got it! The Bubbles cake is actually a reference to a series of femisteries where the main character is called Bubbles Yablonsky. The silhouette is supposed to look like the cover of the books.

Christine said...

You know, I read your blog all the time (love it!) and I can totally understand the cakes that are just plain ugly (like the frogs you posted earlier in the week) because of people who just have an irrational perspective of their own talent (like on American Idol).

...But the cakes like this that say things like "Happy Birthday Adam With Blue Flowers"... I still can't figure out how that happens. I really can't. Do you have an answer? Or maybe you ask yourself the same thing every time you post.

Anyway, keep up the good work! You make me giggle every day! :)

♥ xtine
http://www.stuffbyxtine.com

Anonymous said...

Every time I read this blog, the people I work with are alarmed. Apparently, it makes me laugh like a crazy person. Thank you!

noricum said...

Wow... and would ya look at the epic wrinkle in the edible paper on Amanda's cake!

Mommy said...

For a glimpse of someone using a paper towel to smooth buttercream (and potentially leaving a paper towel imprint) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIJHpss5lLo

Sexy Sadie said...

I'm almost surprised that they actually remembered the blue flowers on Adam's cake. A lot of cakes say something like "Happy Birthday in Red" but there isn't any red on the cake.

Anonymous said...

Adam With Blue Flowers!!! Ahahahaha! This has to be a joke, right? One that the decorator is in on?

hyphen8 said...

Thanks for reminding me of one of the first mp3 files I ever had - it still makes me laugh: Jeffrey Hitchin's Tech Support (Transcript: http://baxil.livejournal.com/193207.html; audio file: http://www.prometheus-music.com/eli/virtual.html)

I agree that "Adam With Blue Flowers" would be a great shirt if you haven't already done it. :)