The trouble with Quiznos

by Matt | Feb 1, 2008 | Aggravation, Personal

The trouble with Quiznos is not that it exists, which, is a argument some people might make, especially hungry people wanting something that resembles a sandwich in what a sane person might call a timely manner. It’s not their menu, they’re ingredients, or their sandwich making prowess either, all of which might be valid points in their own right but aren’t the main crux of this discussion. No, the problem with Quiznos is their amazing ability to completely fuck up a sandwich is you don’t pay strict attention to the process along the way. Being diverted momentarily to the chip rack, contemplating soup instead of the afor mentioned chips, looking longingly at the bottled drink cooler even though you know its more economical to get the obligatory combo, all of which will cause instant fuckery with your sandwich. It also doesn’t help that the Quiznos counter is designed in such a way as to create a seemingly impregnable barrier between you the customer and the sandwich being made for you. Sneeze guards so high that you can’t see any of the ingredients, counters just high enough to make those sneeze guards ridiculously high in the first place, and stickers, adverts, menu options and nutritional facts stuck all over it to the point that it might as well have been a solid wall to begin with. So, hungry customers such as myself are left with two options: to either stand on our tippy toes, making sure that the “zesty ranch” gets put on your chicken sandwich as it should be or slinking down the counter in defeat whilst the sandwich barista slathers regular mayo all over it. At this point of course you still haven’t been asked what you actually want on your sandwich, nor will you be. This is apparently against Quiznos regulations. No, you’ve ordered your sandwich and now it’s on auto pilot through the construction process. First the meat needs to be weighed. Not, of course, to ensure you’re getting enough, but rather to ensure that you’re not getting one speck more than you’re going to be gouged for at the register. There is a theory which I believe to be true that state that a “sandwich artist” would rather add their own finger to the pile of meat on the scale than to dip back into the ingredients to get more. They are however, completely content with cutting a 1/8″ piece of chicken in half and removing the extra 1/16″ so as not to upset the scale gods.

This is at least a more sane process than Subway which doesn’t necessarily weigh but certainly counts the elements on your sandwich. The last time I was in a Subway the conversation went something like this:
Me: Can I have some black olives on that please?
Them: Sure… (adds THREE olives to the sandwich)
Me: Umm, actually, can I have a few more?
Them: Sure… (adds THREE more olives)
Me: Actually, I quite like olives, can I please have a few more?
Them: *silent stare* (adds TWO more olives)
After a few minutes of this I gave up. In the time I had been standing there I had managed to acquire a measly 15 thin slices of olive. Glued back together they wouldn’t have fashioned a reasonable attempt at a dirty martini, let alone a sandwich for anyone hungry, but I figured it wasn’t worth the jail time to try and get more. Not that I couldn’t have worked it out, but I had visions of the police pulling me off dead sandwich makers, their mouths stuffed with fistfuls of black olives, shouting “that’s how you make a sandwich you bastards.” I digress.

By this point your sandwich meat has entered the warm liquid bath. No one really know what it is, but they seem completely content to dip every type of meat imaginable into it to make it slightly warmed and considerably more moist. This is a direct violation of both the laws of nature and the sandwich makers third law of structural bread integrity. Soggy food makes for soggy bread. That’s ok by Quiznos standards because the sandwich is about to take a trip into the heat tunnel. Calling is an oven is a gross mischaracterization. It could be cold, it could be hot, it could be the housing for a tiny thermo-nuclear device, we’ll never know because usually its not turned up high enough to make, well, toast, let alone toast and entire fucking sandwich.

At this point your sandwich has come to room temperature, which is apparently what they were aiming for, because now it exits the tunnel and is handed over to the vegetable portion of the trip. The employee that’s station here must have the easiest job in the world. I say this because it consists of completely ignoring the station at which they are standing. You don’t actually get any lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, or OLIVES without asking. Even then you have to catch them trying to wrap up your sandwich before they have a chance to do so. You’ll never actually be asked if you want anything and once that sandwich is wrapped you can forget about them opening it back up to correct it. Then your sandwich, which is nothing more than pre-measure meat and mayo, is wrapped and taped and handed to you along with a $12 bill, because of course you just needed to have that tea in the bottle and not the tea from the soda fountain.

By now you’re wondering why how on earth a place like this could stay in business when they’re so completely dense. Then you remember that the reason you’re here and not across the street at Subway is because you wanted a “real” sandwich and not one of those corporate sell out sandwiches. Then you feel bad about thinking mean things about Quiznos, pay and head back to your office where you realize that all you have is meat and bread, soggy bread at that, and wish you had the time to go back there and yell at those guys because they really are complete fuck-ups. You’ll of course forget about every bit of this by the next time you go in because all you really want at that point is lunch and surely it can’t be as bad as last time.