I bought a new toaster, SMEG TSF02SS. It can do 4 slices of normal sized toast at the same time, or 2 really long slices of "quality" bread. Has a bagel function to only toast one side. Has a defroster function as well, takes frozen bread to perfect toast - best toaster ever!
Does it beep? If it does, I'd put an axe through it…
I bought a fancy Breville stainless-steel toaster a few years ago. What they didn't tell me on the box was that, once it has finished its thing, it beeps. Three times. Long beeps.
Loud beeps.
I checked the manual to find out how I can turn off the beeps. No joy. It's not possible to turn off the beeps. That is despite the thing being equipped with a microprocessor that can drive a fancy animated display and uses artificial (supposed) intelligence to decide when my toast is ready.
Wonderful! I
most definitely need my toaster to beep at me every time it has finished making some toast. That's because without it beeping, I might completely forget that—three minutes earlier—I decided to have breakfast and might end up starving as a result.
How I just
love those beeps! I mean, what sweeter sound can there possibly be first thing in the morning, just as I've taken my first sip of coffee?
A few weeks later, my son (also an engineer) and I decided to open the thing up and to physically disable the beeper. It turned out to be impossible. Disassembly of the thing is so complex and intrusive, and the circuit board that has the beeper soldered onto it (how could it be otherwise?) is so difficult to access that, most likely, we would have destroyed the (quite expensive) toaster in the process of trying to disable the beeper. So, we put it back together again and admitted defeat.
Thank you Breville, thank you! You can make a toaster beep. Congratulations!
Why did you make it beep? Nobody knows. I guess because you could. And because the competition's toaster didn't beep so, if yours
does beep, that must be better, right?
Thank you also, Breville, for assuming that you are entitled to beep at me in my own home for as loud and as long as you deem fit. Whether I make toast first thing in the morning (while my wife is still asleep), or last thing before going to bed (while my wife is already asleep). Never mind whether I (or my wife) would like to be beeped at or not—I am sure that you know what is best for us.
My fancy, stainless, quite expensive, and beeping toaster stopped working after a little over two years. I danced a jig in my kitchen when, one beautiful spring morning, I found out that I couldn't have toast for breakfast.
That day, I went and bought a toaster. A real toaster. One that makes toast. Without any animated display. Without any artificial un-intelligence. Without a microprocessor. And, without a beeper.
This morning, I had breakfast. The sun had just come up. The birds were singing outside. I could just see little drops of dew on the plants in the garden reflecting brilliant rays of early-morning sunlight, and I watched a butterfly settle on a fresh blossom that had just opened up, to have its first sip of nectar of the day. I had my first sip of coffee of the day, admiring the glorious display of creation right in front of me.
Then my toast was ready. My toaster went "CLUNK" as it popped up the toast. And I heard the sweetest sound there is in the morning after the first sip of coffee.
Life is beautiful…
