On a lovely Friday morning Mr. Somerville – the Shallot leader – decided to check up on that good old website only to find not 1, not 2, but 14 bad reviews. A defeated Shallotier said “We’re used to hate mail, and bricks thrown through our windows by Florida senior citizens, emo barbies, Redlands kids, Furbies, and Grammarly officials, but never have we had bad reviews! At least we can cover up our hate mail, burning dog poop bags, and hate bricks, but bad reviews are public!” Production here at the Shallot has gone into overdrive as we pump out quality articles every week. A formal apology was written to the Furbie, Emo Barbie, and Grammarly (not the Florida people or Redlands kids) but still the bad reviews kept coming in.

After investigating these unsatisfied consumers’ accounts a little further, we found something that sent chills down every spine in the room. Even the cardboard cutouts shivered. Every single one of these commenters was born before the year 1709. In addition to the questionable age of the commenters, they each had death dates on their bio. Possibly more concerning, the death dates were never more than eighteen years after their birth date. Apparently, these ancient teenagers came back from the grave, and were dissatisfied by the Shallot. This phenomenon became more unnerving by the fact that they might be related to Shallotiers. After one named Trixibelle Jago Griffin – a known ancestor of the amazing Claire Griffin of the Shallot – left a review, we can confirm that our teenage ancestors are reading the shallot articles, and it seems they hate it.

An example of these reviews is from a certain Gregory “Summy” Thompson Chiropractor. Unfortunately, we could not track down whose ancestor this is, however we do know exactly why he is upset. It describes in the comment, a story from when he was very young, having a bad experience with a shallot. It says that he was just a little boy when he saw an onion sitting on the kitchen counter. He seized the onion, his mouth watering with anticipation. With the onion clasped tightly in both hands, Gregory bit into it, expecting the wondrous taste of onion in his mouth, and was disgusted when it was in fact the taste of a shallot. The 1.2 star review states that our beautiful, factual website brought back traumatic memories of this event.

We sincerely apologize to all the ancestors we have offended but we also encourage you to be smart enough to check whether the onion you’re about to bite into is a shallot. In fact, maybe cut up the onion into little pieces (it’s easier to eat that way). And even if you do make the mistake of biting into a shallot, please do not blame this misfortune on the Shallot of EMS.