You know those Subway TV ads that, over the years, have featured Mike Trout, Apollo Ohno, Ryan Howard, Laila Ali and several other prominent athletes? Well, those folks' livelihoods depends on their "eating fresh," Subway's official motto.
Guess what? Apparently the crew at this particular Subway doesn't give a frack about seeing to it that their own customers do the same, based on my two visits here.
During visit #1 a few years ago during a weekday lunch hour, I asked for a Veggie Delight with spinach. mustard and two slices of pepperjack cheese, my default sandwich selection since 1998. After my placing my order with maximum clarity and friendliness -- I'm in customer service as a living, FYI -- he bimbo-ish staffer who'd kept up a nonstop chatter about this, that and the other thing with her fellow sandwich linemate didn't hear a word I'd said, going ahead and slathering the bun with full-fat mayonnaise, slapping a handful of white lettuce resembling Easter grass from a kid's Easter basket on top, and asking if I wanted any tomatoes. "How's this?" she asked, grinning and holding the concoction up for my certain delight ... right?
Wrong. It was all I could do to keep steam pouring from my ears in exasperation. "I'd said I wanted ALL vegetables, with spinach instead of lettuce, and NO mayo," I pointed out.
"Oh. OK," she said, sauntering over to toss away the partial sandwich. (Apparently she wasn't merely totally inattentive, she was plenty hard of hearing, since I made sure to give her the directions in a super-clear, fairly loud voice.) In making this second sandwich, she'd put a few teeny-tiny leaves of spinach on the bun and ask, "Is this OK?" Lady, I'm not a three-year-old tyke who hates spinach: I'm a grown woman who's eating for health and, dammit, needs her five-plus servings of veggies each day! No kidding here: She took at least four minutes preparing my sammy -- an item that takes the folks at my two terrific local Subways barely a minute and a half to make.
(FYI: In case you see a thin, pale-skinned woman with a waist-length black ponytail in the sandwich-making line, that's her. Be sure to BE VERY PATIENT AND LOUD.)
But that painstaking experience was downright wonderful, compared with the beyond-egregious experience that made me choose to take a pass on this particular Subway once and for all ...
About a year and a half ago, I passed by here for a super-late lunch, at about 4:30 p.m. My sammy of choice for the day was my usual: a six-inch Veggie Delight. With absolutely NO customers here, I stopped in to order my sandwich ... and ended up on the receiving end of some of the most memorably AWFUL service in my life.
The fuchi-faced thirty-something man with a mop of thick dark hair, clearly the manager of this site and admitting to such after "making" my sandwich, gave me some serious attitude about my asking for -- gasp! -- six slices of tomatoes. Acting as if I'd walked into the Subway as if I were preparing to rob the place, the guy's face twisted into an expression of sheer horror. "I can't give you those extra slices!" he scolded. "If I did, I'd lose money!"
Well, sir, I sure as hell haven't seen many other customers here asking for veggies -- many, in fact, refuse tomatoes completely -- so what's this crap about THREE FREAKING EXTRA SLICES OF TOMATOES putting you out of business? And what the hell does this craptacular attitude have to do with, ahem, "eating fresh"?
No wonder the reviews here have been so poor so far. If I ruled the world of Yelp and made it possible to award negative stars, this brutal excuse for a Subway would earn a minus-15 rating. read more