By Guest Contributer Chris Perry
On my way to work this morning I stopped in at the near by Dunkin Donuts. Normally it’s a Wheat Bagel with Light Cream Cheese to start the day, but today I decided to change things up a little. Throw a little curve ball at my usual breakfast fare. I thought to myself “I haven’t had a corn muffin in a while” so I thought I would do that.
Now myself, I like my corn muffin toasted with a little bit of butter. Just enough to crisp the muffin up and so the butter melts when spread. Nothing crazy right? Well when I asked my friendly Point of Sale Register Engineer for a “Corn muffin, toasted with butter please” she immediately had a puzzled look come across her face. She turned to the person next to her, not sure if she was training or not, and they whispered to one another. After a few seconds of back and forth with the other employee, she rang me up with a smile, grabbed the corn muffin and handed it to the Executive Toaster Dude down the end of the counter.
I could see her talk softly to him and the both looked over at me, again, with the same puzzled look on their faces. I’m left thinking to myself “Has no one ever asked for a toasted muffin here before?” After another brief conversation, the the employees parted ways and I assumed everything was all set. So I went down to the pick up window to await my warm tasty breakfast.
After about 30 seconds a strange odor seemed to be coming from the toaster area. The Executive Toaster Dude then opened said toaster and to everyone’s surprise flames began shooting out of the toaster. My corn muffin was fully engulfed in flames, like an over sized marshmallow that got too close to the camp fire.
The Toaster Dude jumped back as the flaming muffin hit the floor. The store manager then grabbed a fire extinguisher and dowsed the muffin, toaster oven, and pretty much the entire toaster/sandwich station creating quite the mess as you can imagine. It seems that the Executive Toaster Dude decided that he should just throw the whole muffin, wrapper and all, into the toaster. The wrapper, being made of paper, caught fire. The Manager and Toaster Dude both turned and look at me as if I tricked them into setting off a dirty bomb in Downtown Boston. Pure disgust came over their faces.
Thankfully a fellow patron in line pipes up “Why would you put the wrapper in the toaster? That makes no sense.” So at least I knew I wasn’t the crazy one here for a change. Now I know the economy is in bad shape. Many people are without jobs, I was one of them for a while, and while I’m not expecting a former VP of Marketing to be making my muffin in the morning, can Dunkin Donuts not find people who know paper and extremely high heat are a bad combination? The State of the Union is weak my friends and we are all suffering. One smoldering muffin at a time.
So the lesson to be learned here boys and girls, stick with what you know, Wheat Bagel and Light Cream Cheese please. Hold the flames. God Bless America.
