VERY RECENTLY I was out on script for The Office for a week. “Out on script” refers to when writers are sent off on their own to write a first draft of an episode of the show.
It is an amazing time, basically paid and sanctioned hooky. This means that instead of showering, dressing, and coming into work every day, I’m allowed to laze around my house in a giant T-shirt and no pants, or go shopping, or attend trendy cardio classes with my fun unemployed friends. Obviously this is the best time ever.*
This time when I was on script, I stopped by my favorite cupcake place, which I will call Sunshine Cupcakes. (Sunshine Cupcakes, while a ridiculous name, is actually a restrained parody of cupcake bakery names. You have no idea. In Los Angeles, cupcake bakeries are as pervasive as Starbucks. They are the product of a city with an abundance of trophy wives, because trophy wives are the financial engines of cutesy commerce that makes Los Angeles like no other American city: toe jewelry, doorknob cozies, vegan dog food, you get it. If I am sounding mean, I should tell you how envious and admiring I am of these trophy wives. I’d marry a partner at William Morris Endeavor and start a cat pedicure parlor m’self if I were so lucky.)
So, yeah, on my fourth consecutive visit to Sunshine Cupcakes, I was paying for my cupcake when the female manager (cupcake apron, Far Side glasses, streak of pink hair: the universal whimsical bakery lady uniform, as far as I can tell) approached me.
FAR SIDE: You’ve come here a lot this week.
ME (mouthful of a generous sample): Yeah, I love this place, man.
FAR SIDE: We know you’re on Twitter. (Leaning in conspiratorially) And if you’re willing to tweet about loving Sunshine Cupcakes, this cupcake (gesturing to the one I was buying) is free.
I did not know it was possible to be triple offended. First of all, Manager Woman, if you notice that a thirty-two-year-old woman is coming to your cupcake bakery every day for a week, keep that information to yourself. I don’t need to be reminded of how poor my food choices are on a regular basis. Second, how cheap and/or poor do you think I am? A cupcake costs two bucks! You think I’m miserly enough to think, like, Oh goody, I can save those two bucks for some other tiny purchase later today! And third, even if I were to buy into this weird bribey situation where I endorse your product, you think the cost of it would be one measly cupcake? The implications of this offer were far worse than anything she meant to propose, obviously, but I hate her forever nonetheless.
This is why I never eat cupcakes anymore. The connotations are too disturbing. Lucky for me, the mighty doughnut is making a comeback. No one better ruin doughnuts for me, or I will be so pissed.
*The other best time ever is lying on my back eating licorice, watching hours of a serialized sex-crime drama—oh, don’t get all offended. It’s an actual genre now; I didn’t invent it—with my head resting on the sternum of an unwilling loved one.