"Hrm, so you're saying the waffle iron's defective?"

  "That's right. It keeps destroying waffles. No matter what I do."

  "Hrm." Nicole tapped the waffle iron with a screwdriver. "Let me give it a try."

  Nicole whipped up some waffle batter in a jiffy, heated up the iron, sprayed some no-u-stick on it, and placed the batter on the grill.

  After a few minutes, the timer light clicked off and she opened the waffle iron, steam coming out in a tuft before calming down to a stream. And inside...

  "What. The. Hell."

  Tofu was so mad, he said a swear. For inside... was a perfect, immaculate waffle.

  Tofu picked it up with his lizard tongue and swallowed it... it wasn't a hallucination!

  "Hrm, seems fine to me. Tofu, you try it."

  Tofu carefully, meticulously, copied Nicole's actions. And when I say 'copy' I don't mean that in a vague, general sense. No, Tofu was putting his full effort into this. He overclocked his processor and meat brain to their absolute maximum physical limit, burning off pounds worth of flesh every second. His movements copied Nicole's down to atomic precision. The quantity of the ingredients in the mix bowel were accurate down to the atomic level. He even copied Nicole's method of locomotion, swaying about.

  He kept up his vigilance even after lowering the lid and activating the grilling process. He was in overclocked mode the entire time, making the few minutes pass like the equivalent of many, many subjective hours to himself. Finally, finally the light went out. Promising a tasty, perfectly prepared waffle for his tummy.

  He lifted the lid, exactly as Nicole had done.

  And the waffle tore in two, stuck on both ends of the waffle iron like it always was.

  He said the very worst swear that he knew.

  "TEDIC FUCKER!"

  After a few minutes of deep disheveled breathing, Tofu was able to calm down. Somewhat. He sighed and pulled out his butter knife.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  While Tofu spent the next few hours curled up in a ball, Nicole ran diagnostics. This was a girl who got things done!

  She had other minions try making waffles themselves. (At least the few that didn't bully her. She noted briefly that most of them tended toward the sociopathic side of the spectrum, uncaring about the fact she was a slob with poor hygiene habits. She was thankful that Tofu, at least, wasn't a sociopath.) That checked out, no problems there.

  So she disassembled the waffle iron to take a look-see on what was going on under the hood.

  And everything looked completely standard. A standard tinker heating element that trapped electricity and converted it to heat. A gyro to tell the angle of the lid. A switch. A timer. All very basic stuff.

  Nothing that could explain Tofu's problem. He should be enjoying fluffy but crisp, tasty waffles on the regular. Hmmmmmmm...

  Oh, wait. Nicole remembered a conversation they had a while ago. That seemed to give a feasible enough sounding theory that they could get past this and move on to other things. (Like..... hugging, maybe...???)

  "Hey Tofu, remember how you said you don't have any benedicci? I think that might be the reason. All appliances use mass-produced tinker parts, it keeps costs down."

  That certainly would explain why everything he put in the refrigerator kept catching on fire. But that wasn't a real problem. Not like this.

  "So you're saying they made a racist waffle iron?!"

  "Um, yeah." Nicole gave an empathetic slight frown. "You'll have to have other people make your waffles for you."

  Nicole spread out her arms offering a consoling hug with a kissy face. And had the words 'I can be one of those people' ready to come out of her mouth, but Tofu had already turned around and was walking out.

  "I'll be taking a vacation from work for a while."

  In the following weeks, a certain conglomerate that had a certain company that assembled household appliances within its holdings, ceased to exist.