A Georgia mom says a Publix worker was ‘trying to sneak it into the box’ before she checked her son’s Spider-Man cake. Then she got it for free

A birthday order went wrong for one Georgia woman when she went to pick up her son’s Spider-Man cake at Publix. She says she had ordered it two days earlier and that it was supposed to be ready at noon.

TikTok creator AshleyJay shared the story in a video that has close to 172,000 views. She filmed it from her car, and the bakery and the cake never appear on screen. She says she got to the store around 2:30 p.m. with an email saying the order was ready.

At the counter, she says nobody greeted her for three to four minutes. Five women were working behind it, she says. An employee later told her the cake needed about five more minutes. She says she was handed a price sticker at that point, and then saw someone mixing icing.

The cake she was handed didn’t match her reference picture

The blue icing was not smooth, she says. She also says the cake did not match her reference picture. “This is not what the picture look like,” she says in the video. The picture had webs and a brick pattern on the red section, and she asked staff to add them.

She says the employee was “trying to sneak it into the box” before she asked to look at it. Another decorator reportedly stepped in. She then noticed that the employee who first helped her was the assistant manager.

The assistant manager offered to fix it but said the brick section would stay off the cake. The creator says that still did not match the picture. She says the assistant manager then told her, “I was already gonna give it to you for free.”

The creator says nobody had mentioned that. She says staff “gave me a sticker with a price on it.” She took the cake and left. She also says it was “the second year that Publix has played in my face” over her son’s birthday cake. She did not say what happened the year before. It is unclear whether Publix has responded.

Publix’s own website lists 24 hours of notice for many of its cakes and asks customers to contact a store for custom orders. Her two-day lead time was longer than that. The store’s own terms for her order are not known. 

Many commenters sided with the creator. One commenter who says they work as a Publix decorator called the design “easy to execute in 10 minutes.” They added that they were sorry it was not done justice. Cake decorating can become an issue when a finished design doesn’t match what a customer expected, as one baker learned when a customer objected to her cake on TikTok.

Another commenter described a similar pickup for their son’s birthday. They say Publix called an hour before to report it was out of red velvet. “I walked out of there with a free cake and a $50 gift card,” the commenter wrote.

A third commenter offered a theory about staffing. “these places are hiring regular workers to do skilled jobs bc they don’t want to pay actual bakers/cake decorators,” the comment reads. There is nothing in the video to support that theory.

The creator then turned to the cost of the cake. “I want what I pay for,” she says. Her plan is to hire someone else next time. “Just find me a baker on the street,” she says.