Bertha and the Birthday Cake

I was thinking of a funny story about a lady I worked with quite a few years ago.  I will call her Bertha for the purposes of this story.  Bertha is not her real name.

The environment was that of an office for a fairly large company.  The section I worked in was all females.  One of the ladies had a birthday the next day and Bertha volunteered to bake a cake.   The next day, Bertha brought in the birthday cake she'd baked.  It was a chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, baked in a 13 X 9 inch pan.  Sounds pretty standard, right?  Well, you don't know Bertha.



Part of the cake was gone.  About one fourth from one end had been cut off.  Bertha had "frosted" the cut end of the cake. 

Someone exclaimed to Bertha, "You ate it!"

Bertha said, "No, I didn't"

"Well, then who did?"

Bertha shrugged, "I don't know what you mean?"  The rest of us looked around at each other.  Was Bertha actually trying to say the cake was untouched, even though it was obviously cut?

One of the ladies said sternly, "Bertha, the end is cut off.  Why did you cut the end off?"

Bertha said, "I didn't."

"Well, someone did."

"I just baked it and frosted it."

"Bertha, the end is gone.  It doesn't bake in the pan that way."  Poor Bertha looked confused.  She truly didn't understand why simply frosting the side of the cut end didn't cover up her crime.  She replied, "Yes, it does!  It did."

Another lady stepped forward to explain.  "Bertha, when you pour the batter in, it fills up the whole pan.  It doesn't just stop like that, like it hit an invisible wall on one end."

And with that, we could see the light bulb flicker above Bertha's head as she suddenly "got it," then her mind switched defensive gears.  She responded quickly.  "Well, I got hungry.  I spent all that time baking it, I deserve to get to eat some of it.  Everyone does that!"  As I would come to realize, that was pure Bertha.

The ladies pooled their money together and someone went to get a cake, uncut and uneaten, from a local bakery at lunch time and the birthday lady was none the wiser, at least for that day.  I'm sure she must have heard the story by the next day and probably laughed her ass off.

I must mention, while Bertha isn't the lady's real name, I did actually call her "Dumb Ass" many times in my thoughts.  Ever since then, whenever the subject of getting someone a birthday cake comes up, I always think of Bertha and her nearly half-eaten cake.  What a Dumb Ass.