Philadelphia, PA – A Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) employee celebrating his 25th anniversary with the agency was surprised to see the cake a local bakery made to commemorate his achievement was emblazoned with words mocking his profession.
Tina Jones said she commissioned the cake from The Bakery House in honor of her friend’s milestone, WPVI reported.
Jones included a photo of a PPD badge with her order, which includes the verbiage “Honor, Integrity, Service.”
But when Jones brought the cake to her friend’s office so he could celebrate with his coworkers, the honoree realized that the badge on his cake read “Coffee, Corruption, Donuts” instead, WPVI reported.
“I wanted to cry because I’m like, ‘I can’t believe they did this,'” Jones told the news outlet. “That’s so humiliating to put on someone’s cake who is serving 25 years and in a not-so-easy job.”
The bakery’s owner, Sandy Stauffer, said the patch that ended up being printed on the cake was a horrible mistake and that the decorator had no idea the image she’d used contained the offensive words.
Stauffer explained the decorator was looking for a crisper image of the badge online because she wanted a clearer, less-blurry photo than the one Jones had provided with her order.
She quickly located what she said she believed was an identical badge, printed it out, and used it to decorate the cake, the bakery owner said.
“It was a mistake,” Stauffer wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “One of my decorators did not see the fine print and placed a disrespectful image on the cake. She believed she was choosing a crisper/clearer image. In her haste, it was an image that had been manipulated. No one caught the mistake.”
Bakery was fully transparent and very remorseful. This is the stack of orders the decorator had to finish. The cake in question was toward the end. Decorator pulled a @PhillyPolice badge from clip art and failed to read the fine print at the bottom @6abc pic.twitter.com/nrcuJAKZIy
— Jaclyn Lee (@JaclynLeeTV) July 19, 2021
She said she and her staff would never intentionally disparage law enforcement and that they are all “beyond mortified.”
“From the bottom of my heart, I and my entire staff, deeply apologize. We are truly embarrassed and are sorry for the hurt and upset ness this unfortunate mistake has caused,” Stauffer wrote. “I have been part of this community for 32+ years and there is nothing I would do to hurt anyone. I have the utmost respect for all law enforcement and so does my staff. We hope you can find it in your hearts for understanding and forgiveness.”
Stauffer apologized to all law enforcement officers for the mistake and said her bakery appreciates them and the work they do, WPVI reported.
Jones said the bakery tried to refund her money, but that she refused their offer.
“I didn’t want the money back because I knew if I accepted the money back it was like, ok what you did, and it wasn’t,” she said.
She has since ordered a new cake from another bakery and said they are hoping to celebrate her friend’s anniversary next week instead, WPVI reported.