Unsanctioned Cake-Cutting Ruins Otherwise Enjoyable Birthday, One Dead

“I’ll teach you to cut the cake into irregular square-like shapes,” screeches Sheila West as she prepares to liberate the blood from her colleague’s circulatory system. - photo by Ryan Kloos

Mohammed Suhail and Michael Swaim

Josh Johnson’s office birthday party started off as something out of a fairy tale: cake, punch, and well-dressed 21st century business men and women, but it ended in tragedy when half way through, the cake ran out.

“It was going so well,” said Johnson, reminiscing. “It seems like it was just yesterday, even though I know it happened the day before that.”

“But,” he added, “I really remember it like it was yesterday.”

Many thought Johnson’s party was destined to go down as one of the most enchanted and enjoyable lunch half-hours ever. Had Johnson stuck to the strict company cake-cutting dimension parameters, perhaps it would have.

But Johnson had thought the cake would be of an ample size, having purchased it from Costco. It had a little airplane made from crème on top, as Johnson had mentioned once that he enjoyed the film Top Gun. The plane was a propeller plane, but, says Johnson, “We were all so deliriously happy, no one cared.”

The cake also bore the inscription “Happy Birthday, Josh!” which most partygoers considered tasteful and disarmingly appropriate, given the occasion. Johnson thought everything would be fine, but he could never have known what would happen next.

“I could never have known what would happen next,” he said, reiterating, “but I guess I cut the squares too big.”

“When I was a kid,” he continued, “I always got the smallest squares ever at other people’s birthday parties. It was always so unfair. I wanted to be an example to society, like Rosa Parks. I guess I know now that it takes more than just one cake to change society. You need two.”

“The punch was great, the cake was great, the conversation was great,” said one of the witnesses and participators in the birthday, Jane Setler. “There was even one of those multi-colored hanging letter banners that had the words “Happy Birthday” strung across Josh’s cubicle. I don’t know when he had the time to hit Party City, but there it was.”

“But then I heard a commotion in the kitchen,” she continued, visibly flustered, “and I went to see what was going on. What I saw horrified me.”

Setler said that as she walked in, she saw two employees violently fighting over the last piece of cake. “There was creme frosting all over the place, and the little airplane was smeared across the floor like a shattered dream.”

During the commotion, several of the partygoers tried to intervene, some losing their own pieces of cake to the enraged employees. Said one, “they just kept grabbing at our cake squares, hands like hungry claws. It was hell.”

The two continued to argue heatedly as Johnson tried to talk them down. Suddenly, the woman grabbed the butter knife she had been using to serve the cake, and she tried to stab the man.

“I had to distract her by throwing one of the last pieces of cake at her,” said Setler. “After that, there was hardly one edible piece remaining.”

After the fight was finally broken up by Johnson and Setler, one of the other employees stepped out for a cigarette and was run over by a delivery truck, killing him instantly.

Upon hearing the news, Johnson muttered “Yeah, I just wish I had bought another cake,” his head sagging.

The two employees who had engaged in the fight have been promoted for their enforcement of the company’s cake-cutting dimension parameters, while Johnson will reportedly undergo mandatory cake-cutting retraining.