I'll tell you what it is. It's the lady at the New System bakery two blocks from my house not giving a shit. That's what it is. My reaction upon opening the tin foil was, "WhaaaaaaAAAAAAAAATT?" -- each "a" ascending by an octave and the "t" breathily puffed out with disbelief.
Is this how you treat a bagel? Non-toasted with a block slab of cold cream cheese in the center? Sacrilege, I say!
As for New System bakery - I'm not going to make some libelous statement against them over this offense. Truth be told, they make a cheap breakfast sandwich that blows my mind and incites enough pleasure within me to last for days...so I'll forgive them.
However, it is insane how many people abuse the bagel. I'm not saying that everyone needs to lovingly caress a finely toasted bagel with the smoothest room-temperature cream cheese. Though, if it's between that and the actions taken in the picture above - please use the former. Perhaps I am too sensitive about this issue. The bagel is, after all, my preferred daily breakfast. It combines two foods of the gods: bread and cheese. The combinations are endless. It's portable. It's warm. It's filling. I needn't go on.
Not everyone agrees with me on this, however. The ladies at the Dunkin Donuts in Rosedale, for instance, couldn't give a proverbial fig about my bagel. They've burned it, not toasted it, given me the wrong kind, etc. Worst of all, they continue to give me a little cup of cream cheese and a plastic knife so that I have to administer the topping myself. This is wrong to me on two accounts:
1) By making me spread the cream cheese onto the bagel myself, these ladies have negated the bagel's number one asset - its portability.
2) Remember when you were little and your mom poured your cereal or made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Then you got a little older and you could do these things yourself, but they never ended up tasting quite like Mom's concoctions? Maybe Mom's estimated ratio was better or something, but there was this je ne sais pas that was (and always will be) missing from yours? That's how I feel when the ladies hand me my separate cream cheese. The fact that I've spent $3 and change on a bagel should GUARANTEE that I open it up to find already applied cream cheese.
I just thank the sweet Lord that the above did not happen with an onion bagel. The onion bagel is too sacred to mess with. If that had happened, I would've shoved that block of dairy up a place a block of dairy should never be shoved.
3 comments:
this picture is hilarious
I took it as the people in my office were having a very serious discussion. No one noticed. I didn't even turn the flash off.
And in case you're wondering - yes, of course I ate the bagel.
we are SO on the same page. Today I got an egg and cheese sandwich at the Firehouse in Canton. The very grumpy, eye-contact-avoidant girl made it with no buttery substance of any kind and there was absolutely no salt or pepper in the egg. It was just a microwaved totally unsalted unseasoned egg on a naked english muffin. I had to go back in for salt and pepper and it was a big production finding it. I mean she did it, but in an expressionless way. I didn't tip. I almost always tip but for some reason I really resented how non-awake she seemed. You work in a coffeee shop! Pour yourself a cup so that bleary customers don't have to feel like they are pushing you along in the creation of normal flavored breakfast sandwiches department. Normal tasting eggs have a bit of salt. rant rant rant. salt salt salt. annoyance, type, type type.
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