Einstein is a moron.

Yes, I know Einstein bagels are not all that great, but they are really the only game in town.
OK, it is 10 AM and I decide to replenish our supply of Einstein Bagels from the local bagelry. I walk in and immediately notice that there are zero Cinnamon Raisin Bagels in the rack, so I ask the lad behind the counter if there are any more in the back as I’d like a dozen or so?
No sir, none in back, but we have a batch that will be ready in 10 minutes.
Winger then uses his best annoyed tone to mention this is the fourth consecutive visit where they have not had the Cinnamon Raisin variety available. This obviously bellicose tone draws the attention of the incompetent manager who explains that other customers, in addition to 'Winger buy Cinnamon Raisin bagels also, thus they are out of stock. No shit, Einstein. I guess Bagel School must have been tougher than I imagined.
I reluctantly agree to wait 10 minutes for my bagels and do so patiently and quietly…which is a struggle for me.
When 15 minutes pass the young lad mentions that in addition to the 4 bagels I ordered they would include 2 free bagels to make up for my wait.
‘Winger, still in control, but confused, says “I ordered a dozen”. I could see the panic in the youngster’s face as he stutters “the batch only has 6 Cinnamon Raisins in it, the manager told me you wanted 4 bagels”.
WHAAAAT?
Manager suddenly appears and something along a Magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale ensues. Other customers are moving aside tables and chairs and escorting small children to far corners of the shop all in an effort to to make room for me to kick the manager’s ass.
Then as a final straw the manager offers to comp me a dozen bagels if I only wait another 20 minutes or so. NO, Moron, you just don’t get it. You’ve already wasted 15+minutes of my life and you want to rob me of another 20.
I think tomorrow morning I will be having a very large party and will be ordering 12 dozen bagels (mostly Cinnamon Raisin) that just might not be picked up.

I walk in and immediately notice that there are zero Cinnamon Raisin Bagels in the rack...

And this is supposed to be a bad thing? Seriously, our local Einstein's, though a bit more competent than yours seems to be, cannot seem to keep sesame bagels in stock. Usually, they have very few savory bagels and an abundance of those ridiculous sweet things (aren't they called donuts?), an abomination in my little Universe.

Mark "Loxstep" Lipton

Save yourself the stress and order your bagels the morning before you want to pick them up. We do, and get what we want without all the hassle, plus they are all bagged and ready to go! I learned never to wait anymore because they almost always forget to tell you that the product you want also had a 30 minute cooling off period before they can bag them up.

Well, you could always bake your own.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14857&p=124990&hilit=celia+bagel#p124990

I wanna know what a cinnamon raisin bagel is. Is that anything like a hazel nut, wheat germ cappuspresso?

I'm from Brooklyn. Bagels are steamed doughy things (with a little vinegar added--the trick) and that's about it. The best part: the bagel shops in Borough Park never run out of those bagels.

I walk in and immediately notice that there are zero Cinnamon Raisin Bagels in the rack

I was going to comment that this is a sign of civilization, but I see that Mark beat me to it.

Let me add my YES NOD to Stuart and Mark. Raisin, sesame, blueberry, etc abominations, the makers are guilty of a capitol offense.

Hmmph. I like to eat blueberry bagels, hot from the toaster, smeared with Smuckers peanut butter, and drizzled with honey. YUMM!

Call them breadwheels or something, then. They are not bagels.

Call them breadwheels or something, then. They are not bagels.

Sweet bread wheels...

How about a tough doughnut, then. I'm from the Deep South, bagels were as strange a food as stirfry and pizza when I was growing up.

I'm from Brooklyn. Bagels are steamed doughy things...

I'm in Brooklyn. Bagels are boiled, then baked. (Steaming is good and common, too, but it is not The Old Way.)

Cinnamon? Raisins? Blueberries? Feh. Those must be hard rolls made by Dannon Yogurt, or someone like that.

[David M. Bueker]

Ok food snobs...cinnamon raisin bagels have been around for a long, long time. They are not some new sign of a food apocolypse.

Plain bagels are the most boring food on the planet after rice cakes. Give me an everything bagel, but in a pinch for brunch a cr is not a bad thing.

You're a German fella, aren't you? Yeah, I thought so.

From Wiki (note the heading):

Non-traditional doughs and shapes

While normally and traditionally made of yeasted wheat, in the late 20th century, many variations on the bagel flourished. Non-traditional versions which change the dough recipe include pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, bran, whole wheat, and multigrain. Other variations change the flavor of the dough, often using salt, onion, garlic, egg, cinnamon, raisin, blueberry, chocolate chip, cheese, or some combination of the above. Green bagels are sometimes created for St. Patrick's Day. Many corporate chains now offer bagels in such flavors as chocolate chip and French toast.

A new sign of the food apocalypse? Relatively so, yes.

Pizza and bagels. Don't fool with Mother Nature.

Sara Lee calls their frozen cotton rings "Bagels", but that doesn't make it so. But I guess if you squint enough, don't touch 'em and don't eat 'em, anything brown, round and holey could pass for a bagel. So what's the difference between a cake-style donut and a bagel? If you don't frost a cupcake, you can call it a muffin, and that makes it healthy.

So, if I stick my thumb through a hamburger bun, can I get away with calling it a bagel? What if I put tutti-fruity non-fat cream cheese on it? Will that make it a bagel?

Can I put ketchup and cheeze whiz on an English muffin and call it a pizza?

When I was a kid, our favorite bakery made cinnamon raisin bread. The cinnamon was swirled with brown sugar inside the dough. Yummy. It was not a bagel. Even if they changed the shape, it would be cinnamon raisin bread.

If you start with a ring of dough and put everything on it, you take everything bagel away from it. I am my opposite. A new mantra.

If you twist the dough into a Mobius strip before you boil and bake it, is it a bagel or a dagel? Or some other inverted permutation of design? Does it need a new name if it becomes something else (dagel?), or is this an instance of a word having more than one meaning and you have to guess from its context?

OK, bagel dough + impurity = bagel. Now we're getting somewhere... I've peered through the hole of a bagel and seen the light!

LOL, I'm with all the previous posters who feel "stress-free" about no cinnamon raisin bagels in sight! Seems like a slight over-reaction as a reason to kick some store manager's ass.
Now if the missing bagels were 'everything' ones, or jalapeno and onion, I might change my mind...but on reflection, I'd just go to another bagel joint.

I'm from Brooklyn. Bagels are steamed doughy things...

I'm in Brooklyn. Bagels are boiled, then baked. (Steaming is good and common, too, but it is not The Old Way.)

Cinnamon? Raisins? Blueberries? Feh. Those must be hard rolls made by Dannon Yogurt, or someone like that.

You are correct--I misspoke on that steamed thing. Must have lapsed into the 21st century for a moment

Ok food snobs...cinnamon raisin bagels have been around for a long, long time. They are not some new sign of a food apocolypse.

Plain bagels are the most boring food on the planet after rice cakes. Give me an everything bagel, but in a pinch for brunch a cr is not a bad thing.

I don't know about that. Ever try cream cheese and lox smeared on a chocolate bagel? There's a reason for simplicity, David.

Reading some of these reactionary replies leads me to believe that we're lucky that food has evolved at all and bagels were actually invented.

Plain bagels are the most boring food on the planet after rice cakes...

And this from someone who likes the purity of riesling!!

Sure, bad plain bagels are ubiquitous (and bad) and I usually go with Everything bagels for the fun of it all. But good plain bagels are no worse than any other straight-forward bread product, i.e. damned delicious when done well!

Reading some of these reactionary replies leads me to believe that we're lucky that food has evolved at all and bagels were actually invented.

There is a point at which changes to a recipe result in a different food, not merely a variation of the original food. For me, sweet breads (bordering on cake) are a category-change from savory breads.

Reading some of these reactionary replies leads me to believe that we're lucky that food has evolved at all and bagels were actually invented.

We're talking taxonomy, not whether or not these products should exist. Eat all the chocolate mint blueberry coriander round things you want, but don't call them "bagels."

Get your prayer wheels spinning. In taxonomic honor of all this discussion, I just ate a toasted half-legab with blueberries, slathered with cream cheese and topped with green pepper jelly for a little bite. And I liked it, but of course I drew the curtains and locked the doors.