Margarita Sciapin: the misadventures of an alleged cake thief and a Boca Raton French bakery and their wounded egos.
Can’t we all just be friends? A Florida woman is suing her local bakery after a disagreement over an alleged unpaid cake led to her being overcome with stress and hospitalised.
Margarita Sciapin, a snow flake jewelry designer from Boca Raton, who describes herself as ‘plant based, vegetarian on a path of balanced eating’ bought a $29 mocha cake from Paris Morning Bakery in Boca Raton in January this year.
A dispute over payment led the bakery to plaster posters next to its register of the woman with the words ‘cake thief’, a receipt stating her full name and some of her credit card information splashed across them.
Sciapin a parent to a 12 year old is now suing the business for emotional damages and defamation totaling more than $50,000.
Sciapin recalls in legal papers filed last week how when she went to pick up her mocha cake the cashier gave her the wrong product and was not able to ‘simply switch the cakes’.
When the world spins faster over a $29 cake drama
The employee, Sciapin alleges, instead suggested issuing a refund and charging her again for the cake.
Sciapin says she did not want to run the risk of being charged twice so decided to keep the original cake and told the employee ‘not to worry’.
Not so recalls the bakery.
One of the posters offered an explanation for the public shaming: ‘This Karen thief stole a cake from us at 5 p.m. on January 22, 2023.’
‘When an employee tried to explain that our refunds don’t show up in statements immediately, she got angry, refused to believe the employee, took the cake, and left while her cake was already refunded.
‘She was very impatient when the employee was trying to figure out how to do a refund receipt, instead of waiting, she ran off with the cake’ the poster concluded.
Can’t we all just get on and share a slice of cake together?
Sciapin claims the posters led her 12-year-old daughter being taunted at school (yes kids, this is the fallout you were waiting for…) and herself to be left in such a state of stress and anxiety that she was hospitalized for shortness of breath and rapid heart rate. Yes kids the trauma of being a cake thief will do such things.
An employee of the bakery told the Miami New Times that images taken from Sciapin’s social media were used to produce the posters.
Materials featuring Sciapin were distributed across Paris Morning’s locations, she says.
‘It’s like a thing across our stores. They actually printed a bunch of different themes of her and then gave it to our stores in case she comes back. We have memorabilia of it in our kitchen,‘ the employee said.
A touch petty?
A manager at the store told the New Times that Sciapin ‘didn’t see the refund on her credit card and said she was just going to take the cake.
‘If she would have waited for two minutes for the employee to text me, to figure out how to print a refund receipt, she would have gotten it. But she was rushing the employee and not being patient, not being very understanding.’
The bakery employees said the posters have been taken down.
Can’t we just all be friends for crying out loud? A mouse caramel s’il vous plaît No don’t worry, this one is on me. Or is it? Let’s see what my credit card statement says next month…
