We get a morning tray of bagels and some cream cheese delivered to work once a week. It’s a small but nice thing from a cool little bagel shop that brightens the day and is definitely appreciated. This once weekly has been the case for as long as I can remember at this place. Now, I don’t always get one as they’re pretty popular but, more often than not, it’s simply because I just forget and am only reminded of bagel day when I see the tray on a table after making make my way downstairs to the kitchen at lunch to the toaster oven for my cold cut & cheese toasted bread sandwich of the day/week or to the microwave to heat up some Beefaroni with hot sauce, or something else Chef Boyardee depending on how flush I am that week or the mood (I really like Chef Boyardee).
On those most occasions when I have forgotten bagel day, I am reminded by this …
… one or a couple of bagel half remainders in the tray and a partially used cream cheese with a plastic knife or two (no, no one ever thinks to put the cream cheese in the fridge) and I am, again, also reminded to continue to be fascinated by the mindset of whoever it is that tears a perfectly good bagel in half and then puts the other half back on the tray, as if almost being generous.
“Well, I don’t want a whole bagel, just a half, and I would surely be remiss, almost greedy, if I didn’t leave the other half for someone else to enjoy right? Plus I’m even spreading the wealth of a limited supply of bagel bounty” I think they say to themselves with a self-satisfied nod.
It’s kind of like trying to figure the mindset of that person who can peer into the at work kitchen’s community fridge and, knowing that not only HAVEN’T they purchased whatever it is that’s in there or that their mother did NOT make it for them, still find it possible to justify the taking of something. Like the devil on their one shoulder, after giving the angel on the other the heave-ho while flipping them off on the way down, has convinced their human that “well, it IS something that you like, and you HAVE bought something similar in the past so it must therefore be POSSIBLE that it’s yours”.
I realize the two things, the bagels and the fridge are different (and as to the fridge it’s the reason that I have my OWN medium sized one in my studio – greatest birthday present ever from years ago – thanks Ma, Beck & Nick) but it is the mindset of both that is so fascinating.
As to the bagel dilemma here? A few things.
One: When in my forgetting of bagel day and the eventual said discovery at lunch time of one or a couple of bagels torn in half being the last survivors note that this is the case, every fucking week. And they come pre-sliced for god’s sake making this even more ridiculous.
Two: it continues to happen because the bagel tearers obviously don’t come back down to the kitchen after sitting upstairs enjoying their torn half while just as surely enjoying the largess of their consideration for others.
Three: If they did come back downstairs they might understand that no one wants the other half of their manhandled bagel, EVER, especially now, though sadly, they would probably be more inclined to wonder how the rest of us could be so ungrateful as to ignore their gesture.
Four: I’m reminded now to buy a loaf of bread, preferably Rye, and put it in my fridge.
Five: Does this mean anything? No. I mean I still ain’t gonna be grabbin’ some half a bagel that has had someone’s meat paws all over it but I was just wondering at the silly and the mundane to pass some time. So necessary.
frankenberrysattic.com 