Sunday, September 25, 2005

I Heart Cake

Yet another wedding this weekend. One more left this year and then I’ll be done and ready to gear up for Wedding Watch 2006. There are only three on the docket so far for next year…but the holidays have a way of causing spontaneous engagements, so I’m sure there will be more. Good thing too. If it weren’t for weddings I could very well go entire years without hearing AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long”. And that would be just tragic, wouldn’t it?

Without weddings I would also have to go without wedding cake. And that would be heart-breaking as well.

This weekend’s wedding included my favorite wedding cake so far. Why? Because I got my OWN little cake! How exciting is that? So exciting. Only a select few got their own little wedding cake, which looked kinda like two stacked hockey pucks covered in frosting (and lets be honest, I would be just as happy with two stacked hockey pucks, as long as there was frosting. It’s all about the frosting.)

I was one of the select few to get my own cake, because I was amongst company who identify me as “Dawn, the girl that hearts cake”. I guess I could be identified as a lot worse. And I guarantee at other weddings I have been identified as a lot worse. But this is a family friendly blog so…

I shall explain just the cake identification.

I used to work with the girl who got married this weekend. The company where we both worked had a monthly party to celebrate all the birthdays that fell within that month. This was an effort to curb the constant parties in every department for every individual birthday. This of course did not curb any individual parties, but instead just gave us one more party. We ate a lot at this company.

So every month a different department was in charge of organizing the monthly birthday celebration. They would send out a company-wide e-mail telling us when the party was and whose birthdays we were celebrating. One month my friend in a different department sent out the party announcement and I wrote her back something friendly and nice and probably not at all smart ass-y. At the end of my response I wrote, “Will there be cake there? I heart cake.” And then I pushed send. And a second later the e-mail popped up in my inbox. Yeah.

Which means that in addition to responding to my friend I also had responded to the entire company. All of which now knew my feelings towards cake. Slowly people started responding, “Thanks for sharing.” “You’re a dumbass.” “What does ‘heart’ mean?” “Nice.” “Thank God that was the first personal e-mail you’ve ever written without a curse word.”

So then I became known as the “Girl Who Hearts Cake”. If ever there was a cake present in the company in any department I was made aware of it. When I left the company my boss baked me a heart shaped cake and wrote “We Heart Dawn” on it. After I left the company I’d still get e-mails telling me when there would be cake on the premises, should I happen to be in the neighborhood and want to stop by.

I’ve recently begun working as an independent contractor with my old company, doing some freelance work in a few departments. Before I started I had to sign an independent contractor agreement, basically saying that I was not a real employee, so I was not entitled to benefits and PTO and all that fun stuff.

When I received the agreement I hesitated to sign it. I wrote back, “In order to sign this agreement I need to know that although I will not be considered an employee I will still be eligible for cake, should it be made available to the staff.”

I received an e-mail back, “Oh, but of course. We will include a cake clause in the contract. We wouldn’t expect you to work under any other condition.”

It’s important in negotiations to stand firm on what is important.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your obsession with cake is hilarious. Didn't you already have a blog called I heart cake? This sounds all too familiar.

I think it's clear when you get married that you will have a massive cake-themed buffet. All cakes, all sizes and flavours. Oh and don't say you're not getting married. Eventually you have to, or you won't get any free cake!

Anonymous said...

What I meant to say in addition was you will probably get married JUST TO HAVE CAKE.

Anonymous said...

dawn there is a b-day party on Wednesday, but no cake. sorry. (tf)

Anonymous said...

For the record: Your response to the entire company was very smart-assey. Something about the cute little graphics taking all of about 3 minutes to put together. Nice. Great job. Regardless, we still heart you, Dawn. (and I heart Lucca's.)

We can make an exception for the Wednesday party to have cake - as I have the 'in' with the party planning department.

Anonymous said...

I like cake. Not so much the frosting though.... I "reply all"ed my entire high school once. That was lots of fun. And got me suspended. Woo!