Holy Flaming Pop Tarts, Batman!

Monday evening. OK, so my job description has now expanded. Formerly, my duties primarily consisted of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, putting down insurgencies among the developers, and mediating inter- and intra-department territorial disputes. This afternoon, I added "wrangling flaming PopTarts". I'm not kidding! Some idiot took the defective toaster out from under the cabinets, put his PopTarts in, pushed the plunger, and then disappeared, never to be seen again. If I didn't know better, I'd say someone at Acme was sabotaging our upcoming releases! I was on a conference call when I noticed smoke billowing down the hallway. I thought nothing of it at first (after you've worked at VLSCI as long as I have, you don't panic easily), then started to grow concerned as the hallway began to resemble Los Angeles on a hot, July afternoon. I exited the conference call with, "Excuse me, I think there's a fire in the hall, I need to go," and ventured out to find the PopTart in question in flames in the toaster. I reached around, yanked the cord from the wall, and began to cough vigorously. The IT folks, who live just down the hall, helpfully closed the fire doors (so that they would not be bothered with the smoke), thus trapping all of it neatly in our little corner of the world. Don't worry, I've since fixed their little, red wagons - I've got my little desktop fan out in the midst of the chaos, blowing down the hall in their direction. By tomorrow morning, they will be very sorry they messed with my team!