Online bookings have seen a sharp increase as of late.

The ease of ordering, however, can sometimes be offset by the inability to perfectly articulate what you might want.

Take first time online cake buyer Windez Tay.

He ordered a Lychee Martini Cake from The Pine Garden.

As stated above, Tay wrote that someone named Albert would collect the cake, perhaps to ease any identifying issues that might arise in the store.

Tay finalised the order.

And of course, here is the greatest cake in the world.

Speaking to Mothership, Tay describes his first reaction when he saw the cake.

"We discovered it at the shop upon self-collection. The shop was quite busy and making any changes at that point seemed like it might spark a scene and delay our dinner plans."

And on his part, Tay himself acknowledged that he realised did not leave a "happy birthday" message to be placed on the cake, so was expecting a blank lychee martini cake, that was, as we now know, not what he got.

While Tay wasn't that chuffed with having his brother's birthday cake being a tribute to Albert's collection, it was his brother who best appreciated the messaging.

"We were initially bewildered, though to be honest, it was my brother who first found it amusing. It took quite an effort for me to personally see the humour in the situation."

But there was no denying the absurdity of the situation, as Tay pointed out in his Facebook post.

"We haven't laughed this hard in ages. What a celebration."

And at the end of the day, perhaps more than a happy birthday message, or Albert's triumphant collection, experiences are what matter.

"I choose to see the lighter side of things because there has been enough negativity in the world, especially across social media. Also, it brought a quirky twist to the GE mood and become quite a unique birthday celebration experience for my brother."

Shop's response

In response to Mothership's queries The Pine Garden explained how this might have occurred.

"For production crew, they will follow what’s typed out on the order form exactly as in this case, and as we do have many requests for odd/hilarious messages every now and then, they probably didn’t give this order much thought. In fact, our sales team do run a brief check daily when they print the order in an effort to spot “weird” messages on invoices, but unfortunately they might have missed this out."

It is of course inevitable that something like this happens every now and then happens in their 36 years of business, especially with the increase in orders and deliveries since Circuit Breaker.

"We have seen an increase in orders and deliveries since Circuit Breaker, and our extremely lean team has been working hard to fulfil them. Many a times having to multi-task and wear various hats due to increased orders, and also as some of our Malaysian crews are still stuck in Malaysia currently. All said, these shouldn’t be an excuse for a lapse in the 'verifying process' and we will look into improving our processes."

And they have reached out to Tay to thank him for the lighthearted nature in which he took the message.

"We are extremely grateful that most of our customers are often very understanding and see the lighter side of things. We have since reached out to Mr Tay as well and thanked them for being magnanimous and gracious over it. They are a good sport."

All's well that ends well.

Top image from Windez Tay Facebook.