Here’s what our fearless, 1.5-bagels-eating leader, Jeremy, had to say:

“Friends of Box 8, I ask you all 2 questions: 1. Is being considerate to your co-workers optional? 2. When eating a bagel do you, or do you not, want the Full Bagel Experience™️ –– i.e. the top and bottom sandwiched around your cream cheese of choice? (Obviously we’re not talking about a boring plain bagel, but rather something with flavor –– say an everything, or in this case the cacio e pepe from @olmokitchen, which BTW 10/10 would recommend 👀).

I would think both of these questions have obvious answers: consideration is NOT optional and HELL YES you want the Full Bagel Experience™️!

My opposition is going to argue that “no one eats just half a bagel”, that anyone who does is “a clear-cut psychopath." That’s just not true. I like snacks, folks. I tend to overindulge in our office offerings, from donuts and cookies to home-made pop tarts (thank you Emma’s mom) and Kingslayer™️ (IYKYK). And of course the item in question here: bagels. Why eat 1 when 1.5 is way better???

So, in preparing my half bagel, I cut it through the middle separating the top from the bottom (as one does, naturally, duh). I would suspect this is how everyone cuts a bagel. Now, what do you do when you’re only planning to eat half of it? Do you leave the plain, boring, flavorless bottom in the bag for the next poor co-worker and eat the mouth-watering top yourself (reportable to HR, BTW)? NO! YOU DO WHAT’S RIGHT: You cut it in half again so that the next person who only wants half, or 1.5 (or 2.5, not judging; this is a safe space) gets the ––say it with me–– FULL BAGEL EXPERIENCE™️.

This world is cruel and selfish enough. Your office culture shouldn’t follow suit. Cut your bagels twice when only taking half. It’s the humane thing to do. VOTE FOR THE DOUBLE CUT.”

However, always supportive and never contrarian Chuck thinks:

“You may be swayed by the enemy’s fancy terminology like ‘The Full Bagel Experience™️’ and ‘cacio e pepe’, but first of all, who eats half a bagel? That’s a selfish movie in its own right. I could stop here, but in the name of Workplace Justice™️, this is a personal attack. Imagine (Emma) opening a bag of fresh bagels (Emma) to find loose bagel quarters (it’s Emma) strewn about aimlessly. Stunned. Absolutely baffling.

Have you ever held a quarter of a bagel? No. Because why would you? We are talking about an un-toasted, loose bagel quarter just going rogue in a bag of fulls. Imagine trying to match that piece with its counterpart. You have two options: stand there in front of everyone and touch every single bagel while digging, or dump it out everywhere. It’s like folding socks. Total nightmare.

Or better yet, imagine going to a bagel shop, buying a dozen bagels, and asking the employee to slice them… AND THEN SLICE THEM AGAIN. HUH?! They would ask you to leave. I mean, where does it end. First bagel quarters… then what? BAGEL DIMES? BAGEL PENNIES?! They literally phased the penny out in Canada, so it’s not lookin’ good, folks.

People deserve fresh, not-quartered bagels. The rate at which the freshness of the quarter bagel deteriorates is exponentially greater than the remaining full bagels. It has now become a bag of bagels + some weirdly large croutons. Does a weirdly large crouton sound like a proper Workplace-provided Breakfast™️ to you?

As someone who I’m blanking on the name of once said: ‘The world is cruel and selfish enough. Your office culture shouldn’t follow suit.’ Half Bagel Eaters, you shall be dealt with (publicly shamed online). Trust.”

News Team Box 8 took to the streets to ask how this has affected local residents everyone else in the office, and here’s what one designer who wished to remain anonymous (it’s Emma) had to say:

“I witnessed something no one should ever have to witness. There I was, about to reach into the bag of bagels, and to my horror there lay two quarter slices, separated in different parts of the bag. I won’t point fingers, but Jeremy Staub of Box 8 Creative, 134 Haven St. New Haven CT, 06513 is the cause of this traumatizing event. Can you imagine the absolute discomfort I felt as I pulled out half of a top and had to search around for half of the matching bottom? Not only that, but Jeremy had also cut them unevenly. I felt ashamed to be part of a workplace that practices this behavior. I will be contacting HR for the trauma this has caused.”

Stephanie, who may or may not also be HR (we actually aren’t really sure, we kind of just send our PTO requests out into the void known as Slack and then hope it ends up on the whiteboard) had this say:

“At first, I thought it was completely psychotic to cut a bagel in quarters. Like who does that? But then, Jeremy did a toasting demonstration for me, and I was sold. You can still toast your quarters AND you're not just being selfish by taking the good half of the bagel. It's not psychotic - it's brilliant.”