Welcome to my buffet breakfast saga from a recent trip, featuring the unforgettable and somewhat infuriating antics of the unnamed “Bread Lady.” This tale from a hotel’s bread station is a comedic foray into the chaos one person can create, armed with nothing but a slice of bread and a flair for the dramatic.

Our story begins with the Bread Lady’s first act of breakfast buffoonery. Amongst an array of bread choices, she was a whirlwind of haste, hastily shoving her bread into the toaster before disappearing. On her return, she found her bread missing (secretly charred and hidden behind other toasts). Confronting me with accusatory eyes, she demanded to know the whereabouts of her precious slice. The toaster, having consumed and transformed her bread into a charcoal-like substance, became the unwitting villain in her morning melodrama.

The next morning, I thought I’d outsmart the bread chaos by getting my toast done early. My bread was peacefully making its way through the conveyor when the Bread Lady stormed in, all bluster and bravado. She jammed her bread into the queue and left, only to return to a bread jam preventing the slices from entering the toaster.

Her bread was stuck, stubbornly refusing to be toasted. What ensued was a display of buffoonish bravado that would have been hilarious if it weren’t so appalling. The Bread Lady, in a fit of impatience, began a frenzied rearrangement of the bread line-up for the conveyer. Her hands shuffled through everyone’s bread around, trying to get it onto the conveyor without burning herself, becoming increastingly furious. Guests watched in a mixture of horror and disbelief as she manhandled their breakfasts with her, possibly grubby, hands.

I left, bread safely on plate, before she was able to summon the kitchen staff to solve her toast-crisis.

As I walked away with my toast safely on my plate and away from her touch, I couldn’t help but reflect on the absurdity of the past two mornings. The Bread Lady, with her exaggerated antics and disregard for toaster etiquette, had turned a simple breakfast routine into a recurring episode of a sitcom.

In a world where breakfast is usually an uneventful affair, the Bread Lady brought a dose of unexpected entertainment, albeit of the exasperating kind. She reminded us that life, like a toaster, can be unpredictable and sometimes, just a little bit chaotic.