There’s a Subway within a reasonable walking distance from my house and I decided to walk there for dinner recently.
(everywhere – at least on the same continent – is within walking distance. If you have the time – it’s just not always a reasonable thing to do.)
We got there and went up to the counter where a complete mess of a woman was shouting at the folks behind the counter.
Now, I believe I may have mentioned my number-one rule at some point:
“Don’t f*#K with crazy people”
My natural inclination would have been to turn right around and walk right on out of there and find a different restaurant. Anyone that thinks it is appropriate to yell at someone working at subway is – by definition – crazy. Or at the very least, a jackass. But we were on foot and that changes things.
Essentially, the woman was complaining that they threw out her pizza when she walked away and left the store – even though her boyfriend was RIGHT THERE. The folks at subway replied that it was their policy and they didn’t know that they were together or that he was going to pay for the pizza – or that he was saving her spot or something. The woman wanted to talk to the manager, but eventually settled down (a little) when she was told she was already talking to the manager. They re-made her pizza, she paid for it, and left – and the rest of us in line were embarrassed for the species.
Or maybe that was just me.
I had placed my order in the middle of this chaos and while they were toasting my sub, the next group came in. The woman at the lead freaked out when they reached for her chicken and asked that they change gloves if they had touched pork.
At that point, my eyes rolled so far back in my head that I could see what I was thinking. And it was dark in there. So dark…
IF the gloves had touched pork? Are you kidding me? It’s Subway. The air is laden with pork. Bacon, ham, salami. There is nothing in that restaurant that hasn’t had some kind of contact with “pork-air”.
It’s like going in a candy factory with an allergy to nuts and demanding that everyone remove everything that has touched a peanut.
Except that a peanut allergy can kill a person. Contact with unauthorized pork will, I dunno, upset God?
I guess that’s what it was about – some unspecified religious rule.
And it was a HUGE deal. There were knives swapped out, multiple sets of fresh gloves, special bread, a kind of waxed paper ballet – just a great honking pile of chaos.
Now, there was a stray piece of onion in the black olives and I could have made a case about that since my hatred of onions is very nearly a religion, but I kept my peace in the interest of getting on with my life. I did smite some people in my head, but that doesn’t count.
We got our subs and ate at the table near the door – in case we needed to make a quick break.
As we were leaving, we asked the crew there if it was always like that – and they said it was. With a kind of laugh of broken dreams and despair.
Which makes a good case to never go back there again – but also makes me wonder, again, about people. There is a lot of good in the world, but some folks seem determined to add to the general misery.
[insert head shaking here]
As a side note, the subs were good. And I had bacon on mine.