Amy's Borderline Company Bistro

[mark_asphodel]

So last night, I came in from trimming the lawn to find the house oddly quiet.  My most excellent spouse was sprawled on the bed in Grandma's room downstairs, earbuds in place, staring at the screen of his phone. I asked him what he was enjoying and he said, with a grin, "Amy's Baking Company."

Well, that was a blast from the past.  My introduction to Yelp in 2010 was the spell-binding incident in which a Scottsdale-area food blogger gave the bistro a one-star review and the owner, to put it politely, went apeshit.  It was a deeply weird and memorable moment on the 'Net.  I remember poking through older reviews of the "ABC Bistro" to figure out what the hell went wrong there.  I even developed a narrative in my head about it.  A woman with good baking skills opened up a bakery, expanded the business, hit some difficulties (one of the older reviews mentioned that Amy had an occurrence of breast cancer, IIRC) and got, well, shitty.  It happens.  People generally agreed the red velvet cakes and such were super-yummy, at any rate.  My mental picture of "Amy" (based loosely on an acquaintance of mine) was of a driven woman in her late 30s or early 40s, dark-haired and dark-eyed (and fairly attractive, I must admit), but high-strung and prone to snapping when her nerves got frayed.  The person who posted the thoroughly nasty "rebuttal" to the one-star review had certainly snapped.

Well.  This particular episode of Kitchen Nightmares blew those illusions away, though the whole ensuing shitstorm did solve the paradox of the yummy desserts vs the shitty pizzas (the desserts are made by others and repackaged by Amy as her own work).  I recommend that you check this out, not because it's a mesmerizing example of what happens when "reality" TV refuses to follow the trite narrative arc the genre demands or because this thing is bound to go down as a case study of how businesses should NOT interact with social media.  Though these are both true.

No, you need to see this because if you don't have a clear idea of what Borderline Personality Disorder is, the titular Amy will paint that picture for you in 3D color.  It's all there-- the paranoia and entrenched belief that the world consists of allies (few) and enemies (mostly).  The inability to take a jot of criticism, however well-founded.  The circular arguments.  The total denial of facts and events and conversations that just happened.  The moments of wide-eyed sweetness that alternate with the crazy-eyed venom.  The sense that this person basically lives in a parallel universe untethered to reality.  The need to have their reality validated by some external judge, who will be scorned the second they refuse to offer that validation.  

I don't know if this woman truly has BPD or an extreme case of untreated bipolar disorder, which looks much the same (but isn't).  But living or working with someone who does have BPD means grappling with this exact profile of toxicity.  If you've never had to deal with such, lucky you.  If you have...

Midway through the show, my husband took off his earbuds and said with distinct note of awe in his voice, "It's like if my mother opened a restaurant."

PS: Also Amy and her husband appear to be horrible, criminal people and looking over the timeline I suspect Amy's "breast cancer" might've coincided with the time she went to the slammer for identity theft.  The C-word makes a better story for one's customer base after all.

PPS: Also even the pictures of cakes and such on the website turn out to be stolen.  Really.