Many of us use a toaster every morning for breakfast blissfully ignorant of what the dials mean.
It could be just toast with a topping of butter and a spread, to accompany eggs, or with avocado if you're a financially irresponsible millennial determined to never buy a house.
We may even think we know what that mysterious dial stands for - surely, it's for how many minutes you want your bread, crumpet, or waffles toasted?
Unfortunately since this is not cult sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf and sentient AI toasters haven't been invented yet, we can't just ask a toaster.
So people went for the next best thing - they asked Reddit.
A post on the social media platform asked: "What does the dial on the toaster mean? Number of minutes to toast or the power it toasts?"
People had a lot of suggestions of the meaning of the mysterious dial.
"It depends on the brand of your toaster," suggested one. "Generally, it's just more time but some marks do go to minutes per number, while others just go higher = longer."
Regardless of whether it's power or time, many users had the same conundrum - what's the point of the higher settings when even a middle setting has the same effect on a slice of bread as a nuclear test?
One said: "On any toaster I've had, I have no idea what any settings above 50 per cent of the dial are for. Just incinerates everything."
Another posted: "More importantly I want to know why it goes up to 8 or 10 when 5 turns it into a slab of carbon."
Well, Reddit may not have had the answer, but fortunately electrical retailers Curry's do.
An expert explained it all in a post on the retailer's website.
"Many people think that the numbers on a toaster dial indicate minutes. However, this is largely untrue," they wrote.
"After all, some dials go up to 6 or even more. Can you imagine leaving a slice of bread in for that long? You’d set off your smoke alarm!
"While some toasters do use a timer-based system, most modern toasters work differently. With those digits more likely to refer to the intensity of the toasting, rather than a specific length of time."
They added: "This means that the knob still controls how long your toast stays in the toaster. It's just that the digits don’t exactly correspond with the number of minutes before your toast is ready."
Featured Image Credit: Kinga Krzeminska/Getty Images
Kit Roberts