I hate bagel stores that open after 6 a.m.

I have to be at work at 7 a.m. That's fine. But that means that when it's my turn to bring office breakfast on Friday morning, I need stores to be open so I can purchase office breakfast.

I could have baked. I could have. But I just moved, you see, and I didn't have a muffin pan. Or flour. Or sugar. Or even raisins that I could have fashioned into a raisin loaf with the help of some wine, because that's all I had in my fridge Thursday night. Wine. Half empty bottle. With cork floating in it. Another story.

So I resolved to buy bagels Friday morning. I even went by the bagel store the night before to see what time it opens. No times listed. But I wasn't worried. See, I live on a busy street now, one with lots of stores, so I assumed something, anything, would be open.

But as I stood in the rain Friday morning at 6:30 a.m., I knew I was in trouble. I'd walked half a mile in either direction from my house, and there were no bagels, no breakfasts, not even lights to be found. It was cold and rainy and dark. I stood in front of the bagel store. I stared in the window. I gave myself a five-minute limit before I would trudge to the metro, breakfast-less. Time passed. Suddenly there was movement in the dark. An employee must have gone in through the back door! Bagels for everyone! So I stood. I waited. I anticipated warm, luscious bagels, cinnamonn-y raisin goodness. I was hungry. The bagel store employee took off her rainjacket. She picked up her newspaper. She stood in the middle of the goddamn bagel store and read her goddamn newspaper while I stood out in the goddamn rain, waiting, anticipating, and hungry, watching her.

Obviously she had to open the bagel store at some point. There were other people waiting with me at this point, and we all stared in the window from beneath our umbrellas. When she did open the door, I angrily barged in, and she must have sensed that. I asked for a dozen assorted bagels. Oh ho, how silly. I should have specified that assorted meant an assortment of bagels, like maybe two of six different kinds, and not, say, six sesame bagels, four everything bagels, and two hard-as-a-goddamn-rock plain bagels. Who eats everything bagels?! On Friday mornings?! People are going OUT on Friday, people are talking long happy lunches, and people do not need onion breath and poppyseeds in their teeth! Plus the bagels were a day-old.

My first Friday morning office breakfast was not a success.