Earlier this summer—several eons ago in campaign time—the political story of the day was that Mitt Romney couldn’t identify a doughnut. Media outlets like BuzzFeed and Daily Kos ran with the story; it was minor and goofy and perpetuated the narrative of Romney as awkward and out of touch. But as a New Englander myself, I knew it was highly unlikely. Dunkin’ Donuts is, without a doubt, the surging, caffeinated lifeblood of Massachusetts. No way the former governor couldn’t recognize a doughnut.

In fact, there was another reason for Romney to be familiar with Dunkin’ Donuts: It’s arguably one of Bain Capital’s success stories (by their reckoning, anyway). And while Romney was gone from Bain Capital by the time it purchased this New England staple in 2005, his campaign has become a target for slighted employees who want higher wages, benefits, and better working conditions.

And these Dunkin’ employees are not alone. Dozens of workers from other Bain-owned companies across the country like Burlington Coat Factory, Baskin Robbins, and Toys ‘R’ Us joined a handful of Dunkin’ employees this week in Tampa at a rally to decry the dehumanizing impact of Bain-style capitalism. At a Dunkin’ employee pancake breakfast in Dorchester, Massachusetts this past Saturday, I spoke with a handful of these current and former Dunkin’ Donut employees who are wicked friggin’ pissed at Mitt—and ready to go tell him all about it.

IT BEING A Saturday, and early, I stop at the store by the St. Mary’s T-stop for a coffee and an old-fashioned doughnut on the way to the breakfast (it was, for the record, undeniably better than the one I had a few days prior in D.C.). By the time I transferred from the green to the red line, seven of the eight coffee drinkers I’d seen had been caffeinating with Dunkin’. If that wasn’t enough to reinforce how integral Dunkin’ is to New England culture, there are eight within a two mile radius of the Great Hall in Codman Square, which hosted the breakfast. If you expand the range to five miles, there are more than 50.

Starting at about 9 a.m., 150 people gathered in the Boston suburb’s old public library to eat pancakes (not doughnuts), but, more importantly, to air their grievances against Bain and their former governor, and to send their protest representatives off to Tampa. Fair or not, Bain (and by extension, Romney) has come to epitomize a certain kind of capitalism, and has thus become a focus for the criticism of what some call “predatory capitalism”: the rituals of saddling companies with debt to pay back the firm’s investment, extracting profits at the expense of workers’ benefits, and taking savage advantage of tax loopholes (all of which have all received due diligence in the press and in pro-Obama ads smothering the airwaves).