I went down to the office cafeteria for breakfast, eager to make myself some toast, when I noticed that the familiar Toastmaster 3000 was gone! In its place was a regular two-slotted bread toaster.

The Toastmaster 3000 (yes I’m making the name up) was a wonder of technology and innovation. It had two dials; one for speed, the other for heat, measured in British Thermal Units (BTU). Ooo wow golly gee! It’s sophisticated because it doesn’t measure in Fahrenheit or Celsius! Someone out there knew what these knobs meant, and fiddled with them, but I… I was just happy to place the bread on the loading tray, that would load it onto a slow conveyor belt which would heat it using hot lamps and hot metal filaments underneath. It would then land on a tray underneath. Voila! Toasted bread, not much of a wait!

If it wasn’t toasted enough, I could load it in again!

(I wish I took a picture of it when it was still there. *sniff*)

Now, all that was left was a regular toaster, with just a dial knob for time. It was set at its maximum, 5 minutes. I didn’t know what time to set it to, so I placed two bread slices and waited for five minutes. Oh wait, I pressed down the loading mechanism to activate it, too. 😛

By probably the fourth minute, steam was coming out! It was like boiling water! Whoever was using it before me was probably trying to match the color of his/her toast with the color of his/her coffee.

The cafeteria dude understood, so he threw it away and let me try again.

I set it to two minutes. Just nice. One minute (the minimum) was alright, too.

I wonder though, who set it to five minutes before this. What would he/she do with it? It would make the perfect prank for people who don’t fiddle with knobs. Hmmm.