The revenge of the cheesy bagel

Today was bagel Friday at work, a wonderful tradition started a couple of years ago that has been eventful in many ways since its' inception. This morning, I came in, checked my e-mail and went to the kitchen for my obligatory cup of coffee and bagel. I selected half of a cheesy bagel and waited patiently for the toaster to become free.

I should note that we currently have 3 toasters in the kitchen at work; a regular two slice, a four slice (which only has one working side on account of someone breaking off the handle), and a toaster oven that smells like someone is about cook some kind of diesel fuel and is therefore not even plugged in. So, where we would regularly be able to toast 8 bagels at one time, right now we can only toast one.

Firstly, my toasting was delayed as I witnessed one of the VPs yelling at one of his employees for trying to pull her toast out of the toaster with a knife. After he informed her that electrocution by toaster wasn't covered by workers comp, she turned bright red and skulked off quietly lest she be berated a second time.

Finally, I get to the toaster and pop my bagel in, chat with a couple of other hungry co-workers and then hear the toaster "pop" to indicate that the bagel is ready. Of course, the bagel was still hiding in the toaster so I grabbed the handle and pushed it upward to eject my breakfast...and it did. The bagel popped out, rolled across the top of the toaster, off the table and disappeared behind the fridge. I managed to rescue my food from it's hiding place to throw it away, which involved wedging myself between the table and the fridge while reaching behind it and providing everybody present with a lovely view of my butt in the air...thankfully wearing jeans today. Having successfully retrieved it, the same colleague who was trying to stick the knife in the toaster asks me "why are you throwing that out?" I replied that I thought it was best to not eat something that had been lurking behind the fridge, which was met with a rather blank stare. Remind me not to eat at her house for dinner.

I checked back in the bagel pile to see if another cheesy bagel was waiting for me, but to no avail. After all that, I concluded that perhaps today wasn't a good morning for a bagel. My boss offered to console me by splitting the pear he grabbed from the fruit delivery with me, but I declined and settled upon some strawberries and cereal instead. I'm a little scared of what I might have to go through to eat lunch!