Baker Details Birthday Cake ‘Nightmare’ After Mom Says 6-Year-Old Daughter ‘Hated' It 'So Much’ (Exclusive)

"I've literally have seen it all. A lot of people are always just trying to get something for free," baker Greg Mason tells PEOPLE of his birthday cake debacle

Confection controversy!

Greg Mason recently went viral on TikTok for sharing a video recounting an unhappy customer's "mean" complaint after receiving a unicorn cake for her 6-year-old daughter's birthday that didn't look like the inspiration picture.

"So apparently I made this 6-year-old cry, she's heartbroken and ruined her entire birthday because this cake is just so ugly," Mason says in the video. "Didn't match her inspo pic, the name in cursive is not kid friendly ... the border looks like toothpaste, don't like the roses," he recalls in part of the interaction.

"Ya'll know I don't usually share customer interactions like this," Mason adds in the clip. "I decided to film me redoing it because if you come into my business and treat me like I'm an incompetent piece of trash and say you're going to start posting stuff, then I'm going to post stuff too and stand up for myself."

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the North Carolina-based baker explains the backstory of the dessert debacle and defends his custom creation, which was ordered with several specific requests — preventing it from being perfectly replicated to the inspiration photo.

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"A lot of my style and influence is pulled from just old-school techniques," Mason tells PEOPLE exclusively. "So I don't do printed images, I don't do fondant. I don't do any of those crazy frou-frou cakes. I do just bakery-style cakes out of buttercream."

Mason, who says he's grown up in bakeries his "whole life" and studied at a culinary school before opening his own business, works at Treat Yo' Self in his home state's town of Wilson. His designs have gained notoriety on Instagram and TikTok with nearly 2 million followers across platforms.

"A lot of people see me online and they want these crazy cakes and stuff," Mason says of his creations made at Treat Yo' Self, which celebrates its five-year anniversary in December. However, due to his "old-school techniques," there are limitations to his designs.

Mason says sometimes people "want a cake from here so bad that they just agree" without absorbing the fact that his design won't look exactly like an elaborate photo shown as inspiration because of his chosen techniques.

In the 6-year-old's case, that was the disconnect. "She wanted a simple unicorn cake, but the unicorn horn and ears are made out of a fondant," he recalls of the mom's request. "We don't do fondant here ... and we make that very clear to people."

"So I got the inspiration picture that she sent and I explained to her," Mason says, assuring that "everything was fine, everything was cool" in the agreement. "But I was reluctant to take the order at first because her daughter had [an] allergy."

The young girl was allergic to food coloring, which added another challenge in replicating the design because the colors wouldn't be as vibrant as those of the cake in the inspiration photo. But as the "people pleaser" Mason describes himself as, he agreed to do it anyway.

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"I used these natural food colors, which is fine, but I even went out of my way to make a fresh batch of buttercream just in case, so it's not contaminated ... cleaned my station down, made sure there was no food coloring anywhere," Mason explains.

"I know the colors weren't exactly like the picture — but also, [she] brought in the food coloring and those are just the colors," he says. "So I'm making the unicorn cake, which I thought was pretty cute and was happy about it."

Ultimately, the birthday girl's dad picked up the cake to bring home — only for the Treat Yo' Self bakery to receive a call from the family that they didn't like it. So Mason offered to redo it for them if they brought it back to the shop.

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"She was just being very rude and hating on everything about it because it wasn't like the picture — after I had already described what it would look like," Mason recalls in reference to the limitations they had previously discussed when placing the initial order.

"I offered to redo it since she said nobody else in town would do a cake like that," Mason says in reference to both the intricate design and allergy restriction requests. Plus, he reemphasized that they don't make "double cakes" — which is what she wanted.

"I did everything I needed to do to be able to sleep at night because I know if I didn't fix it, even though she was mean to me, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it," he says. "I'd rather just try my best to make the situation better and then move on."

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But before the birthday girl's mom came to pick it up the refreshed cake, she called the shop back. "She was like, 'Well if I take the cake, do I still get a refund or not?' " he recalls, which then opened up another uncomfortable conversation.

Ultimately, Mason gave her a refund without the cake. "A lot of people are always just trying to get something for free. Not always, but that's why I just ended up refunding her," he says.

Don't worry about the redone cake, though! Mason put the revamped unicorn dessert in the bakery case for $10 "as a joke" because he says he likes to "make things lighthearted when situations like that happen" — and in classic Treat Yo' Self fashion, "it sold literally immediately."

He says, "Yeah, that was gone within five minutes."

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