People’s Bagel Co-op Collapses After Workers Seize the Cream Cheese

Founded with high hopes and higher cholesterol, the People’s Bagel Co-op in Brooklyn came crashing down Tuesday after a faction of radical employees seized control of the cream cheese and declared a “dairy liberation front.”

The worker-owned bakery began as a utopian vision of socialism: equal bagels for all, equity in schmear. But within weeks, tensions rose over onion bagel privileges, raisin representation, and the proper definition of “spread redistribution.”

Trouble boiled over when a rogue co-op faction locked themselves inside the walk-in fridge, demanding lactose reparations and a new position called “Emotional Support Schmear Officer.”

Customer service deteriorated fast. One man waited 45 minutes for a pumpernickel and was handed a pamphlet on butter’s colonial legacy instead.

Mamdani called the collapse “a learning opportunity in economic democracy” before being pelted with stale everything bagels by a betrayed brunch crowd.

Attempts to mediate with non-hierarchical consensus circles failed when nobody could agree on who was leading the mediation.

A final communique was posted outside the boarded-up co-op: “We have abolished bagels. Gluten is oppression.”

By sunset, the entire staff had unionized against each other.

The shop has since reopened under new management: a retired cabbie named Sal who sells cream cheese at market rate and calls everyone “chief.”