I walked in for the normal Sunday-afternoon public session which is always fairly empty, good enough to run through some freestyle when I saw a family at the front desk. Mom was visably upset and Dad was just hanging out watching football on the TV. Several children were headed up to the party rooms with presents and one with a crock-pot. There was a rectangular-shaped birthday cake on the counter with pretty white and pink frosting.

My coach was sitting close-by and told me that there had been a problem with the cake and there were no balloons in the party room and that Mom had asked for her money back. At that point, the kids that were once headed up to the party room, were coming back down the stairs and out the door. Obviously the party was not going to happen. We discussed the "What would we do if this happened to us" and decided that we would probably try and make the best of it and stay at the rink for the party anyway.

That is, until we heard what the problem REALLY was.............

The young girl at the rink that took the order for the cake had misheard what the mother had wanted the cake to say........

Instead of "Have a Happy Tenth Birthday", the cake said....

"Have a Happy PIMP birthday".


By the time we found this out, the family had long gone, but my coach and I laughed until our stomachs were sore!

Oh- that's sad. I hope the kids weren't too disappointed.

Cake decorators seem to run without their brains on quite a bit. have you seen this blog? http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ My favorite is a cake that says "I want sprinkles" on it.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Skittls:

Thank You! My co-worker and I are laughing so hard tears are coming out of our eyes!!!

I don't think (the original story) is funny at all. The child's celebration was ruined, the poor kid, and the parents were UNDERSTANDABLY upset.

I don't understand why "pimp" has become such a common word that an order-taker would think it was what a woman wanted to put on her child's birthday cake. Does she think the mom is a hooker? The dad a john? Is it common among teenagers and/or young adults to call each other things like that? How vulgar.

I had a kid trick-or-treat this year dressed in a flashy bathrobe with loads of jewelry and shiny gold shoes. When I asked who he was, he told me HE WAS A PIMP! He couldn't have been more than 10, why does he even KNOW that word?

Unrelated to that, I received a ...ahem... "promotional email" where someone was pushing his website. His email said "I'm just PIMPING my site." Haven't been back to his site since - that was a terribly offensive thing to write to business acquaintences. I don't want emails like that in my inbox. (Although I might send it to a business writing professor of mine, for her ongoing "What Not To Do" project.)

Yeah, I know about the show "Pimp my Ride" where they fix up the cars. Not thrilled with that title either.

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I have no problem with the world pimp, because it just doesn't mean what it used to (just like you can't use "gay" for "joyful" anymore, because it's meaning has changed too). But like i said in the previous post- it seems like MANY cake decorators don't think, they just do. That Cake Wrecks blog has a cake that is "Happy Birthday Death and Amy" (not sure if Amy is the right name) over the phone the woman said BETH. They didn't even think to call to check that that was correct.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

I'm smack in the middle of Isk8NYC and skittl on this one. I do find the word "pimp" offensive, and deplore that it has come into popular usage the way it has. At the same time, I understand that what the word used to mean no longer strictly applies, and so am not quick to take offense.

I think the mom in the OP's story is the one who ruined her daughter's party. She could also have just calmly asked for a plastic knife and scraped off the offensive word - while asking for a compensatory rebate on the price of the party/cake. She could then have told the kids a mistake had been made on the cake, but it would still be delicious. By becoming visibly upset herself and making a big deal out of it, she set the tone and made the party impossible. Her moral indignation hurt no one but her own family.

BTW, this is a great reason to bake and decorate your own cakes!

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Unfortunately... the word 'pimp' could have been scraped off with a knife or spoon for that matter and they could have had the party. The cake wouldn't have been perfect but it would have saved the embarrassment of telling all those kids to go home.

BTW... that web site was really funny!!

Oops... me and dbny had the same thoughts at the same time.

Okay, non-skating cake story.
Back when I was in college I took a library cataloging course. Unknown to the general public the Dewey Decimal system is incredibly powerful, and can be very specific. So for our teacher's birthday we created a Dewey Decimal number for birthday celebrations --- in Texas --- in 1940 (teacher's year of birth--for women--with the last initial of S. It was about a 10 number entry.
We ordered the cake. When I went to pick it up the decorator said "So you're the one that ordered the cake with all those filthy numbers on it."

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Great forum quotes:
On Falling: '...it doesn't matter, it's what you do AFTER you fall that's more important' ISK8NYC

That's true. I assumed that it would have ruined the cake, but you're right: it's just frosting. Smear it around a bit and add some whipped cream. If the balloons and the cake were wrong, I wonder if there were other mixups that turned this into the "final straw?"

Lesson learned: if the party comes with a cake, check the lettering at the start. Then you have time to scrape off a mistake and send someone on a mad dash for a can of Redi Whip, lol.

I disagree about using "pimp" in polite company. That's just wrong and if the woman was a card-carrying prude like me, that could have been what sent her over the top. Seeing that someone was dumb enough to write that on a kid's cake makes you wonder if the cake was intended for someone else. I don't even think about what might be in a pimp's cake filling...

The Cake Wrecks blog was funny - I sent the link to my DD for some of her friends in pastry school.

As an aside, one of my group lesson students had a party at the rink for her friends. Her dad went out of his way to have me come see the cake his mother made for her granddaughter. It was shaped like an ice skate, with a blade, the stitching, and neatly-tied laces. A real work of art! She said that she and some friends took a cake decorating class and she really had a knack for decorating. After she retired, she started working at a pastry shop doing it professionally a few hours a week.

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I'm with you - it was just a dumb mistake that could so easily have been fixed by a little icing surgery. Drama lama strikes again.

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It's all about the dress!

There's a woman in my office who makes cakes as a sideline business. She says she always makes the person placing the write out exactly what they want put on the cake or spell each word if she takes the order of the phone. Then she keeps the written record with the cake when she delivers it in case of complaints.

She did have a husband who spelled his wife's name wrong and she took the blame for it when the wife noticed. It was an unusual spelling of a common name and the wife took it in good grace.

My favorite cake story is one where a bakery made a cake for the service anniversary of a couple of the engineers and the decorator called to verify the wording "Happy Anniversary, Rich and Carl." She wanted to be sure it wasn't supposed to be "Carol".

And I'll agree that the woman in the OP ruined her kid's birthday herself and turned what could have been a funny memory into a nightmare.

Using "pimp" as a verb to mean "pretty up" is very American, I find; there is a television programme called Pimp my ride which I gather is to do with prettying-up old cars - I thought, at first, it was about hitch-hiking. Surely the verb used to be "primp"?

That said, I use a Firefox skin called "Pimpzilla" which is all chrome-y and leopardskin-y because it amuses me.

I think I am in the camp which thinks the mother ruined the party - how hard it is to nip out to the nearest newsagent for a packet of balloons and a pump, never mind a little surgery on the cake icing (although I don't think whipped cream would go very well with Royal icing!). Of course, I'm not her, and I wasn't there, but I do think it would have been better to have registered my complaints with the rink management, done what I could to rectify them, and helped my child and her guests enjoy the party.

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

I don't think it came from "primp" so much as "worthy of a pimp"- a really "tricked out" (yet another prostitute connected phrase) car with all kinds of expensive goodies.

I've never thought of it as "pretty up" before.


People will also use pimp as "to advertise". ie., The club is really pimping the ice show.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

Oh man - I understand why the mom was upset but the cake could totally have been fixed.

But I've got to admit that story made me laugh so hard I started coughing

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Revised Official 2010 Goals checklist
Skate __
New boots __
(lowering the bar for 2010 as I haven't skated in a year)

'to pimp', in casual usage, doesn't really mean 'pretty up', or even 'worthy of a pimp'....it's closer to Skittl's last definition. It's 'advertising', or 'selling', in the way of 'pushing' something.

Like, if I 'pimp' this site, what I'm doing is telling all my friends about it, and encouraging them to come check it out. It really is harmless in this usage--I'm not offended by it in the least.

I think the cake thing is funny--in that 'we'll laugh at this later' kind of way. Seriously, though--cake decorators *really* need to check anything that seems odd in even the slightest way.

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

Yep I completely agree with you, to advertise is how I think of it.

I was just trying to reply to the "pretty up" definition- which I had never heard before.
But in "Pimp my ride" sort of phrasing, I consider it to be "worthy of a pimp", not advertising it.

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

I noticed yesterday that the programme is now on one of the minor channels, and they've changed its name to something more innocuous, but I can't remember what off-hand!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

You have to love the urban dictionary ...

"pimp
one who brokers the sexual favors of women for profits

pimp
As an adjective: If somethin' is pimpin', it's pretty darn cool. It's probably something "normal" that's tricked out ghettolicious and gawdy.
Basically, you look very ghettofab and blingbling.

However, as a verb
1.) to pimp something out is to *make* it look very ghettofab and all that nifty stuff in the above paragraph.
2.) to pimp is to advertise (generally, in an enthusiastic sense) or to call attention in order to bring acclaim to something; to promote. "

But, according to my sources "It's SO last year" as a term.

Now I'm wondering what "ghettofab" means.....

I'm a child of the 70's and "far out" was way cool & groovy, man!

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Think 'shabby-chic'. You know....how something all paint-chipped, scratched and banged-up is suddenly supposedly attractive and desirable, because some nitwit decorator says it is?

Take the usual 'ghetto' style (I'm assuming way too much bling, garish colors, that sort of thing), and call it wonderful.

Ick.

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

Hmmmm, there are some girls in my college class that dress like that..

what ever happened to good-taste and keeping it looking nice? i've never been one for the "dumpster look" (as my mother would call it) maybe it's just boho-gone wrong.....

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Back to the cake - ya know, it was just a mistake - why make a federal case out of it? Scrape the word off, have a laugh, maybe ask for the cake to be refunded and get on with the party. Sheesh. Not everything needs to be a drama-rama.

As Mrs. R said - we're not in the woman's shoes. I've met mothers at skating parties that were royal PITA's, unhappy about everything. To me, it sounded like the cake was the final straw that upset the mother. The OP said the woman also complained that there were no balloons. I figured that those were the two tangible complaints, and that other things also went wrong.

I remember a birthday party that someone in the office booked and didn't write on the calendar. The party room never got set up (forget balloons - we're talking no tables or chairs!), the requested instructor wasn't scheduled, there was no cake, but 25 kids and their families showed up without warning. (Lesson # 2: Always call that morning to make sure they know you're coming. Even if you've already confirmed the headcount.)

Our staff was competent and scrambled to put the whole thing together in less than a half-hour. They told the parents the room was still being set up and sent them to skate first so they had time to dispatch a cake messenger and call in two hostesses who lived nearby. The parents knew there was a screwup, but they were satisfied by the end with the result.

Especially since a second instructor was assigned, free of charge. The college student who they approached to cover the party on short notice was supposed to be driving a high school teaching assistant home. She hesitated to say yes because of that, so the rink manager said "Oh. Tell you what I'm gonna do..." Two instructors for one price.

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Gah! deleted my post, it was already posted!!

__________________
Revised Official 2010 Goals checklist
Skate __
New boots __
(lowering the bar for 2010 as I haven't skated in a year)