1651 – Web designer thinks he can decorate cakes better than a ten year veteran. Make it make sense!

Web designer thinks he can decorate cakes better than a ten year veteran. Make it make sense!
CONCLUDED
I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/PorcupinesareGod

Originally posted to r/EntitledPeople

Web designer thinks he can decorate cakes better than a ten year veteran. Make it make sense!

Editor’s note: changed letters to names for ease of readability

Trigger Warnings: destruction of property, manipulation, possible bullying, harassment

Original Post: November 13, 2025

As the title might imply, I work as a cake decorator for a small grocery chain in the Midwest. I’ve been doing this job for over ten years. I’m self taught, but I’m good at what I do and I’ve got the photo portfolio to prove it. I’m known for my skill at freehand design on cakes, so customers often come to the store and ask for me specifically for custom designs. I have a few regulars who buy several cakes designed by me per year, so I have a cemented reputation for quality cake designs.

But I’m also overwhelmed in my work volume and need help. Note, there are conversations happening, but I’ll be paraphrasing a bit since I remember the gist, but not the actual wording. This all happened about a month ago.

In comes a boy. Let’s call him Jake. Jake is fresh out of college and looking to make some side money while he builds his web design business. Understandable and even admirable. After all, entrepreneurship is hard and successful businesses don’t form overnight. I’m a little surprised since male cake decorators are a bit of minority for some reason (no joke, in ten years of this I’ve only ever met two other male decorators)

I start training Jake in the basics of crumb coating and main coats so I can focus on the actual decorating. I’m also training him on filling the display case, labeling, dating, marking out, slicing bread for the actual bakery, etc. the one thing I ask him not to do unless I’m absent is taking cake orders because I have a specific way I like it done. Because I do a lot of free handing, I like to add as much detail as is physically possible on the order sheet and draw a sketch in the back of the paper so the customer can get the best image to match their vision. Obviously if I’m not there, whoever is asked will take the order and if it’s something complicated, I’ll just call the customer.

Jake told me he understood and when his training was done, we started working.

I started to notice a few issues. Now I’m aware that since Jake was a student of code and internet, he’s not gonna be the world’s greatest baker or decorator. I get that this is just a job for him whereas it’s a career for me and he’ll probably only be here a year or two depending on the growth of his business.

But Jake started acting weird. For one, he started bossing the other bakers around. When one of the newer girls labeled a whole batch of bread wrong, Jake snapped at her to do it again and do it right. Yes, she’d put the wrong labels on, but I could see her tearing up from his scolding.

Next, I came in one morning after a day off and Jake had changed around the entire display case. Normally I wouldn’t care, but we have a planogram to follow from the store indicating a standard they wanted to see and if a district manager came in and saw this, I’d get hosed since I’m the decorator and it’s my responsibility. When I confronted him on this, he told me he thought it looked better this way. I’ll admit that some of it made sense, but he’d stacked all the sheet cakes on the top shelf, crowding them and making it difficult for the customers to see the designs. He’d also put the ready made cakes all in a corner and piled all the single serve desserts in the whole bottom shelf, pulling out about three times more inventory than was necessary and forcing me to pull it all back into the freezer. This process took about an hour. I forced him to finish while I checked my orders.

The blood in my veins froze when he told me “Oh, they’re done already. I finished them yesterday morning.”

“What?” I went and checked the cooler and sure enough, all nine cakes ordered the week before sat on the shelf.

And they all looked like absolute horse crap. I hadn’t trained him on the decoration portion of the job Bexause A: that’s my job and B: he’d only been there a week at that point and it takes time to learn this stuff. He knew enough at this point to write (sufficiently) on a cake, do basic coating and basic borders. He didn’t know how to do literally anything else. I had to scrape all nine cakes and rush four of them in under two hours to meet their pickup times that afternoon and evening. That’s a lot of frosting waste, and I was starting to get annoyed.

I wasn’t the only one. Jake was annoyed that I’d ruined “his” cakes. He told me “I took my time, they looked so good!”

“They did not look good, and I can’t send them out like that.” I told him.

“Look, don’t blame me because you’re too slow.” He said.

Now, I’m just the decorator. I don’t have the clout to fire anyone and I could quickly see Jake was just being an idiot. He didn’t know what he was doing and anyone with eyes could see that. But boy was I getting pissed with him.

I was too busy remaking the cakes he botched and filling some new orders that came in online so I let his BS slide. I told Jake to go help a customer at the bread counter.

For a couple of days after that, things seemed normal and Jake appeared to have calmed down. I chalked his outburst up to stress, but I was keeping an eye on him. I was helping slice a huge order or bread that was overloading the bakers when I saw Jake helping a customer. I recognized her as one of our regulars, a woman who could be a bit prickly if her orders weren’t done to her exact specifications.

He showed her something on his phone and then I saw him take out an order form. He filled it out, showed the customer and then he stuck the form in my folder. I waited until he was doing something else before I went and checked it.

He’d taken an order for a type of cake we ABSOLUTELY cannot do in a retail setting. Think a three tier specialty flavored wedding cake with fondant and hundreds of flowers and edible glitter, a cake the price of which would factor in the hundreds and which I did not have the supplies, facilities, equipment, or even the pricing for in our computer. Now I stress again, I’m aware the kid is a web developer, not a baker or decorator. However he was well aware by this point that we can’t do cakes like this. And he even wrote that the customer asked for me specifically.

I immediately confronted him again and told him this is not a cake I can do. He actually smirked at me and said, no joke, “Ah, so you actually CANT do this kind of cake. Want me to do it for you?”

Now, I actually COULD do this cake. Just not in a retail setting where we don’t even have a price sticker for it. I asked him what his problem was, what was with the attitude.

“I think I deserve some more credit for all the work I’ve done to help you.” He said.

I told him “Jake, I trained you in the basics of running a bakery and frosting cakes to take some of the volume off. I did not train you to decorate cakes yet. You just don’t know what you’re doing yet, and the cakes you did the other day made more work for me. If you want to learn, I’ll teach you when I have time. But for now, please stop trying to do my job for me and focus on what I taught you to do.”

I left him and went to go phone the regular and pray she was in a good mood to accept that I couldn’t do this kind of cake. (Yeah, she wasn’t happy and I wound up having to promise her a discount)

I felt I was being reasonable with Jake. I guess I was wrong because he suddenly got a LOT worse.

Roughly a day or two after that incident, I came in one morning and not only was Jake not there, but he done all my orders from the previous evening, AGAIN. And again, they looked horrible. And AGAIN, I had to scrape and redo them. He’d also crumb coated literally every single round cake base we had and stacked them mass production style on a rack in the freezer. So now I had zero round blanks and a crap ton of crumb coated rounds in a single flavor. BIG issue. I had to order four more boxes of rounds.

Jake also harassed that newer baker girl again, this time to the point of full on tears after he deemed her “Happy Birthday Ryan” wasn’t good enough on the cake she was asked to write on.

Jake has even tried reporting me to the manager, complaining that I’m discriminating against him because he’s black. (I’m not sure if he is or isn’t, really, his skin is kind of olive toned? Either way I never said anything about his ethnicity so I’m not sure where this is coming from)

He’s driving me insane. All of what I’ve mentioned has happened over a period of about three and a half weeks. When he’s good, he’s very good. When he’s bad, he’s the devil in a blue ball cap.

So that brings me to today and I’m frazzled, fried and tired as hell. All I have is word of mouth on his antics and my managers aren’t exactly cordial when it comes to employee squabbles and have made it more than clear they’d rather us settle it out of court so to speak. It’s a small franchise of like three stores so there isn’t really an HR I can go to. Any advice?

Edit: Hooooooly shit, this blew up. Okay, I just got through reading the comments and wow, seriously that was a LOT to go through. Firstly, I truly appreciate the advice and support I got for this and what should be done. I’ll address a few common points since I can’t possibly answer all these.

Point one is short and sweet: I’m not a bot, this isn’t AI, I just go into a shit ton of detail. I’m autistic, sue me, it’s what I do. To the best of my knowledge, AI generally can’t swear, so the word shit shouldn’t be possible lol. I could be wrong about that, but I am a real person. I know my account is new, I came here looking for advice, it’s my first Reddit account. Nice to meet you all

Point two: I would LOVE to take photos, however there is a STRICT no phones policy for all employees, with exceptions for phones being used as medical devices. We have a person with type 1 diabetes whose phone is used to give him updates on his levels. It doesn’t really do anything else so he’s allowed to keep it for his needs. The rest of us are SOL.

Yes, I know this policy is stupid and frustrating, but they bring the hammer down hard on anyone they catch with a phone. However, I have a workaround I may be able to try. It’ll involve more waste, but I could just sneak a few of Jake’s cakes and some of the frosting waste into the smaller blast freezer where we store ice cream and present this as evidence, so I’ll give that a shot. I still haven’t touched the crumb coated rounds and I did save that BS order he took for the prickly regular. I’m also going to start writing down the hours I spend fixing his mistakes and all the tasks included, as well as the prices of the cakes that can’t be used. You’re all right: money talks more than I ever could and I should take advantage of that.

Point three: this store is in the middle of a managerial power struggle. Our old manager retired five months ago and the higher ups below him are all scrambling to figure out a new hierarchy and deal with the new young store lead who just took over. He’s…not great at his job and tends to under supervise. So my managers are going to be more of a hindrance than a help. My husband recommended I contact the owner of the small franchise so I may do that. He does live within the area so emailing him might be the best option.

Point four: I love the idea of just letting one of his crappy cakes go out to a customer, but I have more respect for my customers than he does and I’ve built a rapport with them. I don’t want to disappoint them. It’s not about protecting Jake, it’s about keeping people who come to me for my skills happy and satisfied with my work. I’ve only gotten where I am thanks to word of mouth from people I’ve impressed, I’ve brought a lot of custom business to the bakery purely through the grapevine. That’s a lot of reputation I have to be careful about. Believe me, I want Jake gone. He’s only getting worse and bossier. And I’ve gotten a lot of ideas of how to start going about this thanks to you guys. And while I could probably let the display case slide, I just can’t bring myself to let him screw up someone’s custom birthday cake like that.

I’m bad at dealing with conflict. It’s always been my worst social skill. That’s why cake decorating is perfect me; I get to be creative and I’m largely left alone to do my thing. I’ve been SUPER lucky to have never had to deal with a “Jake” before now, so I’m kind of in uncharted waters here. That’s why I reached out and why I appreciate all of this advice. I can’t say for sure how long it’ll take to get enough evidence to bring to the owner, but I promise I’ll give you guys an update when I have something. Thanks so much.

Edit: a few people have asked for cake photos. I don’t have any from this store because I don’t want to risk losing my job, and yes, some employees including Jake do risk it and bring their phones. But I have photos from previous places I’ve worked. I’m trying to figure out how to add photos

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: Have management actually seen the “decorated” cakes he’s produced? Do they understand how much they’d lose if you sent out Jake’s work? Ultimately they’ll only care about the bottom line, so you’re going to need to demonstrate how much he’s cost over 3 weeks. Document and email everything – dates, costs, what you did in response.

OOP: Oh they’ll see them now. I’m gonna start saving the worst cakes in the blast freezer. lol, I’m not AI. I’m just super thorough. Plus, would AI even know this much terminology? I don’t use any of the programs, so I’m legit curious if it would know this stuff

Commenter 2: Tell your manager everything. Have other workers corroborate. If they don’t support you, go on vacation for 2 weeks and let them find out the hard way.

OOP: Great idea to involve my coworkers in the bakery, they’ve been dealing with him too. Especially the girl who’s been packing bread for them lately. He keeps singling her out and it’s really stressing her out

Commenter 3: Take photos of his fucked up cakes and the order for a cake your store doesn’t do, take the time to document every line he crosses, then take it to management. If they won’t do their job and manage this situation after that start looking around for a position at another bakery before his antics tarnish your reputation. That’s about all you can legally do with a know it all dipshit who’s trying to tank you.

OOP: That’s the biggest reason I keep fixing his shit; I’ve worked damn hard for this reputation since a lot of decorators can’t/wont freehand and I’ll be damned if I let him screw that up. I just don’t even get where this came from, he wasn’t like this the first week he was here. Why’s a web designer want to decorate cakes so badly?

Commenter 4: Document everything. Photograph the botched cakes. Are you his supervisor? If so write up what he has been trained to do and that he isn’t authorized to do tasks he isn’t trained to do. Explain that crumb coating all those cakes might have seemed a logical way to be efficient, but it isn’t efficient if you don’t have blanks for orders that don’t require crumb coating. Explain if more cakes are crumbed than needed that the extra will go stale before they are needed.

As computer geek he probably trying make thing more efficient, without the understanding of things like food becoming stale. Maybe devise with him how many crumbed cakes can be on hand and how many are too much.

If you explain why things are done the way they are done and ask why he he did what he did maybe he will learn something and together you might find ways to put his analytical mind to work the save time.

None of this might work, I’m getting narcissist vibes, but document his training, insubordination, harassment of other staff. You do have to let management know how much frosting he is wasting (photographs).

OOP: You know, that actually makes sense. Like he’s trying to translate his expertise in technology into the bakery. I really want to give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s NOT stupid by any means, but he’s definitely raising tensions back here at a REALLY bad time in store operations when tensions are already high

Commenter 5: As long as you keep saving the day instead of letting Jake’s failures becomes management’s problem, things will get worse. Stop protecting Jake.

OOP: It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? It’s a stupid balance of keeping things looking good and making customers happy that really does start straddling the line of protecting this idiot

OOP on why they haven’t confronted Jake yet?

OOP: (Chefs kiss) beautifully said, I just can’t bring myself to let the customers pick that shit up when they’re expecting my usual quality. Some of these people have been ordering specifically from me for a couple of years now and their standards are almost as high a mine. I’m horrible at dealing with conflict so I’m WAY out of my comfort zone. The managers are kind of useless right now since the old store lead retired and the new one is kinda useless. But I plan to start recording what happens and I’ll email it to the owner. It’s a small franchise, so he should definitely show some interest. Thank you so much for this great breakdown.

Commenter 6: Why aren’t you taking photos of the cakes he’s ruining to show your manager?

OOP: Strict no phones policy while on the clock. The only exception is medical device phones

Is there a general manager who can help OOP with this issue?

OOP: We’re actively hiring for a bakery manager. The deli manager is pitching in where she can, but she’s overworked as it is so she can’t always be here

Editor’s note: OOP made an update in the same post

Update #1: November 15, 2025 (same post, two days later)

Edit, 11/15 Okay, it’s the weekend and Jake isn’t working today and tomorrow. We had four cake orders yesterday, two of which are due tomorrow. Jake made those orders even though I asked him not to. And of course they look like hell. I can’t take photos and I won’t risk my job bringing in phones like some others here are willing to do. Trust me, Jake isn’t the only one skirting this rule and honestly it’s the least of my worries.

I took the cakes he made into the blast freezer in dairy and let the department lead know I want them left alone for now. I emailed the owner of the stores and let him know I have a problem here and everything that’s been going on, and that I have proof I can show him if he’s willing to stop by. I also got a few of the other bakery people to agree to put in their two cents when he does. He’s supposed to come by tomorrow to check in on things. I’m more confident talking to him than the new manager, this guy is pretty chill and easy to talk to.

I’m remaking the orders with fresh cakes and scraping nothing. I also took the advice some people gave me and saved a big bowl of scraped icing from previous botched cakes Jake threw together. That’s going into the blast freezer as well so Jake doesn’t see them in case the owner can’t make it.

Thanks for all of the advice, guys. You all gave me a lot of ideas for dealing with this. I truly appreciate it. I’ll give you another update when I have one.

Update #2: November 20, 2025 (five days later)

Sorry, I’m not sure how the update system works, I’m still pretty new to Reddit. But I wanted to post an update about my struggles with Jake trying to effectively sabotage my job in the bakery. What happened here happened just a couple of days ago.

I got in contact with the owner who is an extremely chill guy. I’ve known him for around six years since he took over. (Not sure who he took over from or why, the last guy was kind of reclusive) He had me meet him out for a coffee and chat away from the bakery to tell him everything. I told him about the struggles we’ve had with Jake, how he’s been harassing the bakers, how he’s constantly using his phone in spite of the rules, and especially about how he won’t stop trying to do my job.

The owner, whom I’ll call Henry, was very concerned and said he’d stop by this past Tuesday. He did and Jake was there. In the two days since I’d spoken with the owner, Jake had not only continued to do my orders, he had also begun ordering inventory for me. By the time I realized this, it was too late and we were going to be receiving about twenty boxes of white sheet cakes.

Yay.

So suffice to say it was VERY satisfying watching Henry sidle through on Tuesday while Jake was badly decorating one of my orders. I took advice from you all here in my last post and just let him do it. I sliced bread in the meantime and watched. Henry approached Jake and quite irritably asked what he was doing. Jake looked very confused, and I’m guessing he’d never met Henry during the hiring process. He explained incredulously that he was decorating a cake for a customer. Henry nodded and said “I thought you were hired as a bakery assistant. I don’t believe this is your job.”

Jake tried to explain that I was training him, to which I replied that I wasn’t. Henry motioned me over and asked me to take him and Jake to the blast freezer.

Inside the blast freezer, I’d saved everything from after my last post: 11 ruined cake orders, four bowls of wasted frosting, the entire rack of crumb coated rounds, ANOTHER rack of crumb coated rounds in a different flavor, a random four tiered cake Jake had made during one of my days off and a whole stack of twelve packs of childishly decorated, sloppy cupcakes.

I told the owner that all of this was done by Jake and Jake looked furious.

“Why are these here? These were orders! You didn’t give the customers their orders?” He snapped.

I told him calmly that I’d remade the orders. Because again, these looked horrible.

Henry agreed and told Jake that these were far from passable and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Jake blurted out that he was working efficiently. Henry asked him why he’d needlessly coated all of the rounds, far more than I could use before they expired. Jake instead said to let him decorate them and he’d finish much faster than I could. I was seeing red by this point, but Henry just sighed, told Jake to come to the manager’s office and instructed me to return to the bakery.

I didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t until about an hour or so later that Henry came back to the bakery. He apologized for everything and said he’d fired Jake for product waste and insubordination. Apparently Jake had gotten quite mouthy with him during their talk. Henry acknowledged I still needed help and got that newer baker girl, whom I’ll call J to help me until he could hire a replacement.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand what in gods green earth was going on with that little weirdo. I had some people comment that web designers and the like tend to view other jobs as somewhat “lesser” and simple, or something to that effect? My husband suggested he was merely arrogant and believed he could replace me, but why would he want to? It’s not like he was aiming to be a baker or decorator, so why go through the trouble?

I don’t get it, and honestly I’m glad I don’t have to think about it anymore. J is much better at the job than Jake was and honestly much more steady handed anyway. Sorry it’s not more dramatic, just a standard idiot firing, but I’m glad it’s over. Back to my peaceful cakes. Thanks so much for the advice, guys. I seriously appreciated all of it.

Relevant Comments:

Commenter 1: You were in charge. For Jake, this could not be.

OOP: I’m just glad to be rid of him

Commenter 2: How did that little narcissist turd get this far without getting checked already? Must be his first job…

Commenter 3: OP covered for him in this job for too long. I’m guessing this has happened before.

OOP: Yeah, my own dumb fault. I’d gotten lucky and never had to deal with someone like him before so this was new

Commenter 4: Im curious, without a manager weren’t you the highest level staff member at the store? Did they give you a bunch of responsibilities but no authority? Seems like at the minimum, even if you couldn’t fire him yourself, you should have at least had power to send him home and alert your bosses. Sounds like that guy wasted a whole lot of company money in the meantime while this was sorted out, while offering no benefit back to it, since he actually made your job way harder.

OOP: No, that’d be the bakery manager, which we’re currently hiring for. So the deli manager is technically the one in charge back here. After her it’s the store manager, who kind of sucks at his job

Commenter 4: Maybe you should get the promotion! So happy you are rid of Jake, here’s to happy baking from here on out, and happy customers too!

OOP: J asked if I could show her some decorating so she can make her mom’s birthday cake this year. I’m silently hoping I’ve found my new decorating assistant because she’s doing great so far!

Commenter 5: Jake got his just desserts.

OOP: YEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

Commenter 6: It may not be the most dramatic, but it is satisfying to know that he got fired and you don’t have to deal with him anymore. Although, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the office when he got the axe.

OOP: One of the ladies working orders upstairs told me she heard Jake getting seriously rude with Henry. Henry is really quiet so she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but apparently Jake had some um, “choice insults” about me and how he’d get a lawyer for this. lol, I wish him luck