Baker Knocks Customer Who Rush-Ordered $70 Custom Cake, Then Never Picked It Up — or Paid the Balance (Exclusive)

• In August, baker Abi Caswell received a call from a customer looking to place a complex cake order just three days before it was needed
• The founder of BATTER a bakery X NOLA in New Orleans spent more than an hour making the cake
• But when the customer never came to pick up the cake, Caswell, who often shares her baking videos online, posted about it on TikTok
• The video went viral, garnering more than 7 million views and 13,000 comments

When Abi Caswell received a call from a customer in August looking to place a complex cake order just three days before it was needed, the baker jumped into action right away. The 6-in., double-layer vanilla cake, featuring a blue and orange design, cost $70 in total and took Caswell, the founder of BATTER a bakery X NOLA in New Orleans, more than an hour to make.

"It wasn't easy to make because she picked very opposing colors for the design — they did not go well together," Caswell tells PEOPLE. "I was having to be very careful because she wanted a smudged paint design, and the colors would turn brown if smudged together."

"She also wanted the letters on top hand-painted in gold, which always takes great time and care," the 29-year-old adds.

On the morning the customer was supposed to pick up the cake, Caswell explains she received a call asking for her deposit back. She responded by telling the customer "no," because it was the morning of the pickup and the cake had already been baked.

Instead, Caswell offered to part ways amicably. She explained it was okay if the customer no longer wanted the cake, acknowledging that things happen. Since she hadn't frosted it yet, she suggested she could simply leave it unfrosted so the customer wouldn’t have to pay the full price.

At that point, the customer told Caswell to go ahead and frost it, and promised to pick it up that afternoon.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

"She called later that evening to verify that the cake was completely decorated and ready for pickup," Caswell says. "We called her several times to check if something had happened or if she was still planning to pick it up, but she would answer the phone and then hang up on us."

"It sat in our cooler for a few days over the weekend and through Monday of the next week, waiting for her to pick it up," Caswell says. "By the time we realized she wasn’t planning to pick up the cake, as the party had probably already passed, it was too late to salvage the cake and decorate it for resale."

Frustrated by the situation, Caswell, who often shares her baking videos online, posted about it on TikTok. In the video she explained how the customer still owes her $55 for the cake. She originally paid $25 as half of the base cost ($50) before she added the extra gold and multiple colors.

She admits she was upset at the time and has "a little regret" now because expressing irritation toward a customer was unusual for her. But when the video went viral, garnering more than 7 million views and 13,000 comments, she realized that many people thought the customer’s behavior was completely out of line.

"It was nice to see so many people who understood how hurtful it is to do something like this to a small business and understood my frustration," she says.

"A lot of people wanted me to ruin this lady's credit over a cake! Or share her name and phone number," she continues. "The Internet is wild. I would simply never do either of those things; I hope the lady saw the video and realized what she did was wrong. That would be good enough for me — that she doesn't do this to anyone else ever again."

Caswell adds that, prior to this experience, she'd never had anything like this happen before.

"It was disheartening because we make all of our cakes custom and put so much time and intention into them," she says. "It was also sad because this is a person in our community who chose to hurt a small business."

Her advice to other bakers dealing with similar situations? "Don’t let something like this get you down for long. Take a day to be sad about it, maybe vent to your friends (or TikTok), and then move on. Don’t let the 1% of people who don’t know how to act get to you! Focus on the 99% who are happy to support your business!"

"I hope people realize they can do anything they want, if they are willing to work really hard and take the good with the bad," she adds. "I hope they also find a little humor in the unexpected; even if it's an unkind customer. Cake just isn't that serious at the end of the day! "