I've been living in the area where I live now for roughly five years. Over this time, I have become comfortable with certain establishments in the surrounding blocks that I remain loyal to. Most of these places I'm referring to are in the food/bar industry. The most important thing you can do in these industries is offer the best service and quality you possibly can to receive the loyalty of the 'return customer.' Ultimately, these are the two elements that will keep a bar or food joint in business for the long-term. Where this begins for a business is their employees. The quality of a company's service will be completely dictated by the representatives they place on the front lines to serve their customers.
Where I live, there are two independently owned Subway franchises. Over the course of my tenure living in this area, I've changed my loyalty between the two shops. When I first moved here from where I grew up to here, my presence at the one Subway began only because of logistics; it was closer. I never have gone to Subway in any great quantity. At the most, I probably frequented Subway at a max of one to two times a month. None the less, when someone visits any store (of that size) that frequently you become familiar with the specific employees you see on a regular basis.
After going to this specific location for six months there was a new hire brought in. I didn't know this person in any sort of professional manner. I didn't know his parents or his history of drug abuse. I didn't know what kind of car he drove or what his favorite pizza topping was. I didn't know if he preferred jean shorts over cargo shorts or an action flick over a romantic comedy. Did he prefer folk music to rock n' roll? I don't know. Simply put, I knew nothing about this employee at any level beyond what he was; he was the man behind the glass who put the ingredients into my sandwich at my request.
Despite me knowing nothing about this employee on a personal level, it was because of him this store lost my business. Why? He was ugly. Not just ugly in the sense he was born 'not pretty.' This man was gross. He consistently had uneven stubble on his face surrounded by zits that looked like they should have been popped six years prior. His jet-black hair was always a disaster and appeared to have thicker layers of grease than my stove after pan frying a perch dinner. On top of that, he complimented his already poor physical appearance with neck tattoos that appeared to be Insane Clown Posse (ICP) insignias. I use the word "appeared" because I'm taking a wild guess. The tattoos were as faint as his last memory of using soap. Just to make this real-life version of a Jackson Pollock masterpiece more impressive, he had multiple eye piercings, several lip piercings, and a giant hole in his ear that I could throw a golf ball through from 50 feet away. The bottom line is that he was busted in every sense of the definition.
Had this man worked in a dine-in restaurant, working as a chef behind closed doors, I never would have had this experience. Therefore, it never would have made a difference in my eating rituals. But that wasn't the scenario. He prepared my food a short distance from me. I went to this specific location exactly three times after my first experience with him. I was noticing that every time I went home to eat my sandwich, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that he had not only just constructed this sandwich, but he breathed over it. It became so bad that by the fourth visit, after only eating about one third of the entire meal, I got sick to my stomach. I decided to throw the rest away and cease my support of Subway in it's entirety. For whatever reason, this experience tainted my entire view on the company.
I went, literally, three full years without visiting another Subway. I decided to venture out to their competitors and experience other places with similar styles of food (Jimmy John's, Tubby's, Quizno's, etc). That went on before I decided to brave Subway again - close to eight months ago. Again, this was a decision based on proximity. I moved to a new apartment/flat and there was another location only a half mile away. It's far more convenient to drive a half mile than it is two miles to seek their competitors. At any rate, I broke my strike of this company and began to go to the second location. I also realized that the employee that caused this food strike was probably dead or in jail by then. It's clearly a black and white situation with those being the only two options. Anyways, I began eating Subway again.
Now, I can't lie and say it was smooth sailing from there. My first experience at this store also featured a person that was slightly disfigured. There was a woman who worked there that was missing the bottom half of her jaw. I'm not exactly sure the background to the elusive jaw, but in my best estimation, it was probably lost a gun fight. I feel like if cancer had been the cause, the doctor removing the jaw would have done a cleaner job than what she had. To me, it looked like a [large] bullet when up through the bottom right side of her chin and exited out her left cheek. It's possible the root cause may have been a dog attack as well. That remains a question I never got the answer to, but I'm confident in one of my assumptions being correct. No one in their right mind (I assume she was in her right mind) intentionally removes their jaw. Unlike the Juggalo who intentionally added to his physical short-comings, this woman obviously had a tragic story attached to her absent jaw. Because of this, I continued to support this location. And from what I could tell, she showered and maintained the top half of her face - that was sufficient for me. I was a little disturbed, but I was able to look past it....barely.
This woman must have worked a metric shit-ton. I don't go to Subway that often, but every time I did go, she was there. That was up until about two months ago. I noticed that I stopped seeing her there. It's possible that the villain who took the bottom half of her face came back for the top half. It's possible that a second pack of pit bulls decided to finish the job another began. It's even possible she decided to pack her shit and get the hell out of Michigan and relocate to a Subway store in Jacksonville, FL. Whatever the reason, she's now MIA.
Without her presence, this store became an average Subway. I went there close to four or five times since 'Jaws' was last seen. In between that point and yesterday, everything was fine. Yesterday brought on an entirely new experience. And this experience has completely cemented my desire to never visit a Subway again.
There was new employee brought in that really disgusted me. She wasn't necessarily ugly, but she wasn't anywhere near average either. My biggest problem were her teeth...or lack there of. She was probably close to my age (25ish), but it looked like she had a crack addiction that began as a toddler. And the teeth she did still have were the color of maize. Snaggletooth was disgusting. I gutted it out for a few visits, but yesterday was the nail on the coffin.
This employee decided it'd be a good idea to not button up her green Subway shirt all the way up. In fact, of the three buttons on her collared shirt, exactly zero were fastened. I'm not sure if the motive was to get the attention of guys, or purely a lack of giving a shit. Either way, within her cleavage might have been the most grizzly sites I've ever seen. Not only did she have a mole that had it's own zip code, but there were three, one and a half to two inch pubic-like hairs coming out of it. This mole was easily the size of a quarter. But that wasn't the part that bothered me. It was the fact that I could actually count the number of hairs coming from her mole from 10 feet away. The hairs were as course as the replacement lead for a mechanical pencil. I'm not a biologist and I've never studied hair growth, but I know for a fact hairs that length take time. I immediately began hoping that none of the three hairs become loosened from their mole pores and fall into my sandwich. I became completely fixated on this the entire time.
I lost focus on what exactly she was putting in my sandwich and I asked her to repeat herself multiple times while my brain was on another plane. Fortunately, luck was on my side. She started making the sandwich with the three protruding hairs and when she cashed me out, three remained. When I got home I had serious doubts about eating the sandwich. But because grocery shopping has been two weeks overdue, my options for curing my hunger were slim. It was that, or another peanut butter sandwich (I just realized I eat a lot of sandwiches).
I've decided to completely stop going to Subway. They're hiring practices (maybe they are owned by the same person?) are flawed. I don't think discriminating is fair, but I'm guilty of doing it. I've decided that extremely gross people can't make contact with my food. I know it's shallow and I know it's condescending, but I don't care.
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