Taking A Bite Outta Mine

photo via Wikipedia

By this point anyone reading this blog should be well aware that I’m a huge fan of ice cream and frozen desserts in general.  They make up the majority of our Monday Munchies features.  I dig putting that stuff in my mouth. 

But something happened to me on Monday that shook me to the core.  It jostled my faith in humanity and really caused me to question where we are as a society. 

This is my story. 

So, I’d had a pretty good Monday.  I was in Manhattan and I felt that I’d earned a treat; some celebratory ice cream.  I asked Siri what stores were in the neighborhood.  I went with the store that I was pretty familiar with (and that I’ve written about here before.) 

I’ve been a fan of Steve’s Ice Cream for about a year, so I was really looking forward to seeing what this store’s selection was like.  I was secretly hoping that they’d have Sweet Corn & Blackberry Preserves, but honestly any flavor of Steve’s Ice Cream would’ve been cool. 

I get to the store and scope things out.  It’s a pretty nice layout, not as spacious as other locations, but it’s NYC so that’s to be expected.  On the plus side, all of the snacks were located in the same area.  I could get my chocolate, chips and ice cream very easily. 

Sadly they didn’t have the Sweet Corn & Blackberry Preserves, but they did have two other flavors that I’ve enjoyed in the past; Strawberry Ricotta and Lemon Rosemary Sorbet.  And when I say that I enjoyed them, I’ve really looked forward to getting them again. 

And now they were in my possession.  I picked up some other stuff and made my purchases. 

I went home and went about my evening.  I watched PTI.  I ate dinner.  But everything I did was just passing time until I could finally dig into my Lemon Rosemary sorbet.  I could not wait. 

Finally the hour arrives when I feel it time crack open my prize.  I take it out of the freezer, set it on the table, take off the lid and this is what I see;

I mean, those are teeth marks, right? 

At this point my mind can barely process it.  It looked like someone’s taken a bite out of my ice cream.  Did my roommate sample it?  No, he’s far too civilized.  Plus he’s got completely weird aversions to foods like fruit flavored ice cream. 

Despite the fact that I’d never seen anything like it before, I desperately tried to rationalize it as a manufacturing error.  Then I genuinely tried to tell myself that whoever took the bite used a spoon, so it was probably safe to eat.  I cannot underscore how much I was looking forward to this Lemon Rosemary Sorbet. 

It took me a minute, but I finally accepted that some rapscallion had literally sunk their teeth in the Lemon Rosemary sorbet that I’d just purchased.  I was crestfallen. 

But I still had my back up, Strawberry Ricotta ice cream.  It’s a completely different flavor profile, so it wouldn’t satisfy my craving, but it would hit a spot. 

I crack open the Strawberry Ricotta and this is what I see;

Really?! Two consequtive pints? You cannot be serious! 

Are you kidding me?  This is a goddamn epidemic.  Who in their right mind would do such a thing?  Who has the audacity to scrape their teeth across the top of two different pints of ice cream?  

Naturally, like any victim I blamed myself. 

Had my bag left my possession on the train ride home?  Could someone have stolen a bite from my ice cream then?  And why didn’t remove the lid to check and see if someone had taken a bite of the ice cream before I left the store, or even before I walked up to pay for it?  Why didn’t I take every precaution I could have to prevent this from happening? 

My next move, because I don’t want anyone else to have to suffer what I was going through, was to call the store and give them a head’s up.  I call them and explain the situation.  I ask if this has ever happened before and of course the answer is “no.”  But the guy on the phone tells me to a) dispose of the ice cream and b) bring in the receipt at my earliest convenience and they’ll replace the product.  Pretty classy establishment. 

Unfortunately, my confidence in buying ice cream from this store is completely shot.  I picked up three pints of ice cream and two of them had bites taken out of them.  It’s at the very least troubling and certainly downright disgusting. 

I wish I was cool enough to be like "Oh, I guess someone just wanted to sample the flavors" and laugh it off.  But more realistically I'm going to be the crazy guy who inspects his ice cream before he buys it.  And I don't want to be that crazy.  Because if I do that, then the biters have won. 

Yeah, so that’s my Monday.