The Subway Salad I Couldn't Eat

I don't mean to pick on Subway here. We eat there a lot on road trips because we all like it and it can be a healthy choice.

But one day I got a salad there that I couldn't eat. Of course I was in a hurry. Of course there was a line at Subway, and the people behind the counter were in slow motion. I ordered a salad, which seemed like it should be fast and easy. It wasn't.

If it doesn't suit you to work behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant, you should perhaps consider finishing high school. But I didn't say anything. First the drop-out sullenly plopped some lettuce in a disposable bowl. She flicked the pieces that escaped back in. Then she plopped on the veggies I wanted -- tomatoes, cucumbers, olives. Then she took out the pre-assembled slabs of lunch meat and put them on the chopping-block counter.

With her knife, she began to cut the meat into strips. With every slice, she took off a fingertip of her plastic gloves. When all her glove fingertips were cut off and some had made their way into my salad, she sullenly picked the fingertips out of my salad and threw them away. Then she threw her gloves away and put on another pair.

I knew at that very moment that I would never, ever be able to eat that salad. Why I paid for it and walked out the door has no explanation. Perhaps, for once, I was speechless.

What would you have done?

Comments

[jae]

I would have vomited. Not great in the subtlety department

[lorianne]

and that's why SHE'S on THAT side of the counter, and YOU were on the other side!

[Enola]

Given my current morning sickness, I'd have done as Jae wrote.

Many months ago, I ordered a pound of sliced cheese at a grocery deli. As she was wrapping it up - having taken way TOO long to cut it in the first place - she realized that she hadn't peeled back the paper all the way. Scraps of the plastic covering had been sliced. She tried to pick them out. Then offered to re-cut it. I was in a hurry and already late. I said, "No thank you - I'll just buy pre-sliced." And walked out. No fuss or confrontation.

I probably would have told her "No thanks. I don't want the fingertips."

[groovyoldlady]

I don't know. It would depend on how crazy I was feeling at the time. I went to Subway for lunch today. I think today I would have made a wisecrack, changed my order and asked that a manager fill it.

[Angry]

I would've waited until she presented it to me and then said something like "Oh was that mine...? I thought you were just assemblying waist in order to throw it out. But now you can throw this one out and redo mine properly"

And I would be hoping that she would protest my request so that I could ask for the manager. You know, the 'manager', he's the guy that went through to the end of high school before realising that there was no way he was going to graduate.