A man who brought his colleagues bagels sliced like bread is getting an earful from New Yorkers and social media.

Alex Krautmann on Monday tweeted a photo of his bagels and called the vertical slices “the St Louis secret”. Krautmann said it creates more slices and more surface area for cream cheese. He said the few remaining slices make nice bagel chips with hummus.

“It was a hit!” he wrote.

However, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and a born-and-raised New Yorker, wasn’t buying it.

He tweeted: “On behalf of the New York Delegation: St Louis, fuhgeddaboudit.”

Today I introduced my coworkers to the St Louis secret of ordering bagels bread sliced. It was a hit! pic.twitter.com/XNGbljtpYz — Alek Krautmann (@AlekKrautmann) March 26, 2019

New York City’s chief of detectives, Dermot Shea, thanked posters for reporting “this crime”. He said it would never happen in New York.

Panera, the bakery whence the bagels came, told Krautmann the bagels “are on us” next time and they’ll be sliced however he’d like.

In an article headlined Twitter lashes out at “sociopath” bagels sliced like bread, the New York Post reported that Scott Goldshine, the general manager of New York bagel shop Zabar’s for over 40 years, was also in complete shock.

“I just have to say: why?” he told the newspaper. “That’s bizarre. I’ve never seen it done and I don’t know the purpose of it. If someone asked for that, they’d be looked at like they were from another country.”

If the controversial bagel technique isn’t already a crime, several lawmakers expressed interest in making it one.

“I believe this is a class A felony in New York City. And if it’s not, it should be,” wrote Brooklyn City councilman Justin Brannan.

Manhattan state Senator Brad Hoylman agreed. “This should be illegal,” he tweeted.

New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board had some advice for the St Louis bagel fan: “Stay out of New York.”

Religious authorities weighed in as well. “This is a violation of all that is good and holy in this world,” wrote Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg.

“Haven’t we Jews suffered enough already?” added Sophie Vershbow.

The slice job did have its defenders, although not many. “My timeline is filled with outrage, meanwhile my fat ass is calculating how much more surface area there is to slather butter and cream cheese on them,” wrote Twitter user @CardJunk.