Most of us have heard two contradictory statements: “do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life,” and “keep your passion as far away from work as possible to avoid ruining the joy in it.” But when you’re excelling at your activity and others start peer-pressuring you to do more of it — and they won’t accept “no” for an answer — something has to be done before things spiral out of control. Read the story to know what happened to this hobbyist baker and how you would deal with the situation.
Source: Reddit
I’m a hobbyist baker but my full time job is engineering consulting. There’s more money in the engineering side; when I want to pick up extra hours of work, I’m gonna do engineering work.
But I genuinely like making cakes for friends or for events as a surprise! But I don’t always, sometimes I’m just too busy to make one, it’s just something I do if I happen to have a free day before a get together.
I like making them as surprises because if I screw them up, there’s no pressure to bring something.
But as of recently a bunch of people, have asked me if I can make cakes for different events. And I started just saying no, because I don’t have the time. Plus I don’t know if I could do designs other people make justice, I really just make whatever I’m feeling and kinda wing it.
But people got so annoyed by that, saying stuff like ‘but you made a cake for (other person)” or “I’m not asking for anything hard!”
So I started saying that for special requests, I’m making cakes for commission, and that I can send them my pricing structure if they’re still interested.
My pricing structure is really structured around what it would cost to make it worth it to me, to spend a day making a cake instead of spending it on my main job… So my rates are:
Customer pays the cost of ingredients.
A base hourly rate of $150 (Minimum 3 hours)
If the “deadline” is in under 48 hours my hourly rate is $250
Soo… After I set my commission rates, most people will be like “nevermind” when I mention a commission at all, before I even get into prices. With only two exceptions.
My aunt Jess who I’m not really close to came up to me at Christmas and asked me if I could make a cake for her friend’s party. I said I’m only doing commission work right now but I could send my pricing breakdown. She said sure then she got really rude saying that my cakes were nowhere near that good to charge that much and that she could get better at the bakery.
I said that she should go to the bakery then, they would have something nice!
She got frustrated with me and said she didn’t want a chain store bought cake, and I said there were some non chain bakeries in the nearby city. She said I was missing the point and that my prices were absurd and nobody would pay that. I said that was okay, I had enough business through my main job.
Next my cousin asked me if I could make a cake for her kids birthday party, and I said that I’m only taking commissions. She said that my prices were horrible, for a kids party? I said that kids would like a grocery store cake just as much, I was sure the party would be great whatever cake she got! She said she didn’t want a grocery one, she wanted one of my custom designs. I said that seemed like overkill for a kid’s party. She said that nothing but the price was overkill and that I was taking advantage. Am I A Jerk for “selling” my cakes for so much?
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
