It’s just cheese

It might be difficult to believe that cheese could be a yardstick for measuring the decline of the intelligence of the American workforce. But it can. Oh, how it can.

To prove the point, the Indignant Citizen will pick on the sandwich chain Au Bon Pain. This is not to suggest that ABP, as we’ll affectionately call it, is alone in its cheese ineptitude. Far from it. The Indignant Citizen has found similar levels of ignorance at the Cosi sandwich chain and at several deli sandwich shops in the Midtown Manhattan area.

The Indignant Citizen likes turkey sandwiches with mayo, mustard, cheddar, Swiss, lettuce and tomato. It’s really pretty easy. There are six ingredients, and the Indignant Citizen often pairs them up and groups them when he orders, to be helpful. “Mayonnaise and mustard, lettuce and tomato, cheddar and Swiss.”

You spread the mayo and the mustard, lay on the turkey, top with lettuce and tomato and add one slice of Swiss and one slice of cheddar to each half of the sandwich. You’d think it’s simple until you try and order one at a sandwich shop. Suddenly it’s like you’re asking the staff to prove the Universal Coefficient Theorem for homology as they deliver the sandwich.

The Indignant Citizen has gotten mayo but not mustard, Swiss but no cheddar, lettuce but no tomato. Once he got ham. Occasionally he gets two slices of cheddar on one side and two slices of Swiss on the other, a messy problem, but at least it’s something to work with.

Today at Au Bon Pain typified the experience. ABP, if you haven’t been, gives customers sheets of paper which they can use to order from among the various specialty sandwiches, or create their own sandwiches. When the Indignant Citizen first saw this sheet a few years ago, he thought it would be foolproof. It has not turned out that way. What usually winds up happening is he checks “whole sandwich,” “smoked turkey,” “croissant,” “mayo,” “Dijon mustard,” “lettuce,” “tomato,” “cheddar” and “Swiss” (sometimes writing “both” in the margin and drawing lines from the two cheese boxes to the word “both”). When they charge the Indignant Citizen, they charge him for two kinds of cheese. When he opens the sandwich, there are two kinds of cheese, one slice of cheddar on one side, one slice of Swiss on the other.

Now think about this: If you order a sandwich and check Swiss cheese, you would logically expect one slice of Swiss on each half of the sandwich. Anything less and you’d take it back and say “They only gave me cheese on half the sandwich,” and demand either half of the 79-cent cheese surcharge back or that cheese be placed on the other half of the sandwich.

Let’s extend that logic: If you order two kinds of cheese, each of which will cost you 79 cents, you expect both kinds of cheese on both sides of the sandwich.

So today, the Indignant Citizen walked into the ABP on N. Wells Street, between Adams and Monroe. There, a helpful employee took the Indignant Citizen’s order, which seemed a little strange since the store had provided multiple order pads and a cup full of little pencils on a stainless steel table right in front of the prep area. But who’s to quibble? A dude’s gotta earn a living and if taking folks’ sandwich orders and handing them to guys actually doing some fucking work—you know, making the sandwiches an’ shit—is how you earn a buck, more power to you.

Anyway, the Indignant Citizen watched as this helpful fellow took the order, paying particular attention to the part where the guy checked the cheese selections. He checked both cheddar and Swiss, writing “1/2” beside each. In hindsight, he should have been stopped there, since it’s now obvious that meant “half-order on each side.” But since this whole process reached the point of being ridiculous long ago, the Indignant Citizen will consider it a work in the process of refinement. That means: next time he’ll know to clarify before the order is handed across the counter.

The Indignant Citizen got just what he expected, one slice of cheddar on one side, one slice of Swiss on the other and a receipt showing he’d been charged for both kinds of cheese at 79 cents each.

He considered going back, but he’s done this before and the employees invariably stare at him in their gap-toothed way as if he’s some kind of freak. “I don’t understand the problem, sir.” “Well, the problem is you charged me for two kinds of cheese.” “You got two kinds of cheese.” “Yes, but in total, I got only as many slices of cheese as if I’d paid for one. Two halves of the sandwich, two slices of cheese. If I ask for two kinds of cheese, there should be four slices of cheese total, two on each half of the sandwich.”

[Long pause, and alternate stares exchanged with the receipt, the open sandwich and the Indignant Citizen, then around again.]

“But you got two kinds of cheese.”

It just doesn’t seem that difficult. It seems logical. If the Indignant Citizen were making the sandwiches, he’d get it. Why can’t these people?

The answer, the Indignant Citizen fears, can be one or both of only two things: Either the employees are stupid, they don’t care, or both. It signals a decided drop in the barometric pressure of commerce. The only thing many of these shops like Cosi and ABP have going for them is that someone else makes a sandwich the customers didn’t have time to make in the morning before trudging off to work. If the employees of these stores can’t get it right, you would think business would drop off.

But then, the Indignant Citizen keeps returning … what to make of that? It’s a kind of entertainment at this point. And these places remain crowded, so either others have resigned themselves to inferior sandwich making, or they’ve chosen to order only the sandwiches with ingredients that are predetermined—a turkey club, for example.

And so we slide down this slope of mediocrity, toward a world where “build your own” sandwiches are a faint memory and where restaurants lower the quality and quantity of their offerings to suit the intelligence level and/or work ethic of the employees they can manage to coax through the doors at meager wages.

Customers will resign themselves. Or learn to make their own sandwiches.