Why did the toaster take a vacation?

Because it was burned out!

Did You Know?

The joke works because "burned out" describes both a toaster that's literally overheated and a worker who's completely exhausted, a meaning psychologist Herbert Freudenberger helped popularize in the 1970s. Toasters have been clocking in for a long time, too: General Electric sold one of the first commercially successful electric toasters back in 1909. The handy pop-up version came later, thanks to inventor Charles Strite, who patented his automatic design in the early 1920s after getting fed up with burnt toast in a factory cafeteria.