Once Again, Subway Rises to New Low
I’ve never really understood the success of the giant chain Subway. Their sandwiches are mediocre at best and there are easily a dozen sandwich shops in Austin and probably any other city that are better.
They’ve hinged their advertising for years on this geeky formerly fat guy (Jared) who supposedly lost over 200 pounds while walking to Subway and eating the same sandwich every day. I actually tried that sandwich a few years ago; about the time that first I heard the rumor that Jared actually had gastric bypass surgery.
Now they’ve got a catchy jingle pitching their “5 Dollar Foot Longs”. Only problem is the sandwiches don’t live up to the billing.
OK. So where am I going with this diatribe? Well, a few weeks ago I had been challenged with the task of bringing something home for dinner. And like any food critic with A.D.D., I flat out forgot. It was late when I got home and in our area, nothing was open except this new Subway that had opened on Bee Caves Rd. The frig was bare (a common occurrence when you eat out as much as we do) so in a moment of desperation, we broke down and for the first time in at least five years I went down to the new Subway and ordered a couple of sandwiches to go.
My first instinct that something was afoul was the awful smell in the store. It smelled like nail polish remover, and it was literally overwhelming. The guy behind the counter seemed like a nice chap but spoke barely intelligible English. “They are panting the door,” he seemed to say. The guy sweeping the floor translated. “He means painting! They’re painting next door.”
I should have turned around at that moment and walked out. But hunger is a pervasive force. I ordered two sandwiches, a couple bags of chips, and two cookies. The whole thing came to about $17. I left quickly and was glad to be rid of the offending odors.
Got home a few minutes later and unpacked the bag and presented my wife with her sandwich. I unpacked mine as well. After one bite, she turned to me and said “Uggh, this tastes like it has nail polish on it.”
I tasted mine and had a similar reaction. The odor in the store had been so strong that it had permeated the meat. Ditto for the cookies. The only thing that hadn’t been affected were the sealed chips.
So we tried to find the number of the store but it was not listed. I called the West Lake Hills Subway and got a young man who was obviously quite busy. “I need to speak to your manager immediately,” I said.
“Have customer now. Got to go.”
“NO,” I fairly screamed into the phone. “What number would you call to talk to your manager? This is VERY important.”
“Manager not here,” he said.
We went down this path for a short while before I was finally able to coax a number out of him. I called the number and got a fairly pleasant lady who told me she had left the other store at around 5:30pm because she didn’t like the smell. Why she didn’t immediately close the store was beyond me. But she blamed it on the fact that she couldn’t reach the owner, who apparently has 15-16 subways.
Lord knows how many people walked out of there that night with unpleasant smelling sandwiches. But it’s just another example of franchises where managers can’t make decisions, even at the customer’s risk. And Subway seems to have cornered the market in this arena.
To the manager’s credit, she was courteous and apologetic and offered to give me my $17 back. Then, in an after thought, she offered us a coupon of an equivalent amount for the store at the Galleria. We did not take her up on the coupons.
Driving up to Lubbock that weekend, we noticed a lot of new Subways dotting up along I-20. So the chain marches on. It does so because customers continue to march in. And I still don’t get it.
