How to Open the Bagels from Costco
This is, admittedly, a narrow topic. However, I have put a lot of thought into figuring out the proper way to open the bag of bagels from Costco and I sincerely believe that no one else should spend the amount of mental energy I have exhausted on this subject. By all rights, I am the country’s foremost expert on opening up the legitimately confounding bag of bagels that you can buy from Costco.
And you know what they say: Write what you know.
It should not be this hard to get into a bag of bagels. They should be sealed with a bread tie, which is a thing that has already been invented.
Weird side note: I never throw bread ties away. I keep them. I don’t like the idea of not having a bread tie when I need one. Bread ties have a tendency to disappear from the universe when you set them on the counter, so I keep all of our used bread ties in a utensil / junk drawer in the kitchen. For a long time, I thought my wife was throwing my bread tie stash in the garbage when I wasn’t looking. I eventually learned that the bread ties move a little farther to the back of the drawer every time you close it. Imagine my delight when I discovered six thousand bread ties at the back of the junk drawer! Now I know where they are until they decide to pop out of existence entirely.
Costco does not seal their bagel bags with a bread tie. They have a highly flawed tape system that makes absolutely no sense. Here. Look at this:
They have taped the top of the bag shut. I hate this. But that’s not even the worst part. They have written cryptic instructions on the tape.
Can you read that? It says: Twist and Pull. Which is bullshit. I twisted and pulled on that piece of tape for years and it does nothing. What are they trying to communicate? Truly, a mystery for the ages.
“Maybe I just need to pull this fucker until it comes up off the top of the bag,” I thought, somewhat optimistically. No. 90% of the time this results in a stretched, ripped bag. Or, the tape rips and most of it is still stuck to the bag and everything sucks and it’s morning time and I haven’t had my coffee yet and I do not want to complete some sort of mental and physical agility test before breakfast.
For two years, I rose above this stupidness and cut the top off the bag with a pair of scissors. Fuck it. Once I remove a bagel (the only reason I would ever open the bag in the first place), there will be room to re-close the shortened bag. I have a million bread ties anyway.
Then, out of nowhere, inspiration struck.
Twist and Pull.
Actually, no. That’s a lie. Twist and Pull doesn’t work at all. It’s crap. But there is another way: rip that stupid sticker in half. The paper part, the part that says “Twist and Pull”, is a trick. Rip it. Then, incredibly, the tape parts like the red sea and the bagels are free to rise out of the bag unencumbered. Toast them. Eat them. Go about your day.
You’re still going to need a bread tie to seal it back up, though.
