The art of the sandwich
I had a commercially-made submarine sandwich on Monday. And I know what you're expecting.
You're expecting me to say how dreadfully awful it was. The bread was dry, the cheese had the taste and texture of what I carry my groceries home in, and the only time the vegetables were fresh was when some snotty-nosed kid in a country much poorer than ours packaged it in the same plastic that ultimately became the cheese, seven years ago.
Well, guess what? That's not what I'm going to say at all.
My sub was a triumph of that oft-repeated but hardly ever correct statement that fast food does not mean bad food. The bacon, the cheese, the surprisingly juicy salads, slices of ham and turkey, the maybe-not-gourmet-but-still-quite-tasty-really bread, and even the salt and pepper on top...all of it was done to as close to perfection as some bored older-than-teen earning less in a year than a Japanese underwear vending machine earns in an hour can possibly make it. By the end of it, I was very very glad that I had chosen to lunch on this sandwich.
This, however, begs a question. How can it be, in this modern day and age, that the same product, made using the same instructions, from the same company, can go so horribly, horribly wrong? I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed the step-by-step instructions for everything ranging from subs to coffees to giving change, all plastered under the sneeze-guards or the cash register at your local McSub Jacks, or wherever it is you go. Surely, then, it is not so difficult for employees to follow the directions they are given. If you are making a sandwich for a customer, and they ask for tomato, carrot and beetroot, you do not put lettuce and onion on instead, do you? If they ask for extra cheese, I'm positive you can, at worst, follow the manager's guide to reaching into the cheese section and pulling out twice the number of slices as usual; staring blankly at a customer, and then ignoring their request, is not a valid response. And if I ask for bacon, you cannot expect me to eat it raw. Salmonella and E Coli might sound like legitimate ingredients for a Sicilian pizza, but I would not like them trading jokes with the turkey in my baguette, thank you very much. You see, I can read. And I can see quite clearly on those instructions stuck on the rangehood that the management expects you to microwave the bacon first. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but when something is meant to be cooked but is not, that is usually bad. With one 'd', not two, for those of you whose spelling is as poor as your reading comprehension. And what is the reason for this? Laziness, certainly. But a lot has to do with cultural background.
Now, hang on a moment before the politically correct police drag me, kicking and screaming, off into the dark, cold night. I am about to make some generalisations, and my argument is that one's cultural background, and specifically food norms in one culture, may not be compatible with others. This is not to say that one race is better than another. If you are able to understand the written word, you will appreciate this. So if anyone jumps on their high horse and gets offended, sucks to be you.
Now, it's common knowledge that some nationalities are more gifted in certain areas than others. Get Bill Jones from down the street to play table tennis against Zhang Li from down the street in Guangzhou, China, and chances are that Li will serve Billy Boy up on a platter, despite the fact that Bill Jones might be the Australian pingpong champ, and Li might be 12 years old. On the other hand, if Bill challenges Li to say "thank you", Bill will win this contest of obvious, eminent importance. In the table tennis example, the result is probably due to Li having been in training since he was two, while Bill competes every six months against people who play at the local RSL. By comparison, Li will say "sank queue", because he is unused to pronouncing English words, and his tongue just can't get around it. It's the same for food. Challenge three Indian sisters to make a kofta curry, and they will give you a mouthwatering feast. Challenge them to make a roasted chicken sub with five salad ingredients and mayonnaise, and they go to pieces. They will ignore your vegetable requests, they will ignore the need to microwave the chicken, and you will end up with a sandwich that resembles Chernobyl. Why is this? The answer, I believe, is that, generally speaking, not many people in India make American-style baguettes on a daily basis. It may, to me, seem like the most obvious thing in the world that meat should not be eaten raw or half-cooked, but is it so self-evident to someone whose only experience with western-style fast food options is the hectic lunch hour at the local food court? Maybe Red Subporto or other such companies should realise that their new recruits (not necessarily immigrants) are not actually aware of safe food practices over here, and provide more training. The manager at my local looked at me like I was lying when I told her that other "sandwich artists" had added raw bacon to my baguette, but no, I most definitely wasn't making it up, because the day before, in the same store, it had happened. So maybe management needs to stop taking it as given that all employees know what we routinely see as common sense, and start realising that maybe the new guy doesn't understand that the egg needs to be cooked all the way through, and that the meatballs should not be left stewing in tepid water for fourteen hours.
Then, perhaps, I can forget about safeguarding against food poisoning, and just enjoy my lunch.
You're expecting me to say how dreadfully awful it was. The bread was dry, the cheese had the taste and texture of what I carry my groceries home in, and the only time the vegetables were fresh was when some snotty-nosed kid in a country much poorer than ours packaged it in the same plastic that ultimately became the cheese, seven years ago.
Well, guess what? That's not what I'm going to say at all.
My sub was a triumph of that oft-repeated but hardly ever correct statement that fast food does not mean bad food. The bacon, the cheese, the surprisingly juicy salads, slices of ham and turkey, the maybe-not-gourmet-but-still-quite-tasty-really bread, and even the salt and pepper on top...all of it was done to as close to perfection as some bored older-than-teen earning less in a year than a Japanese underwear vending machine earns in an hour can possibly make it. By the end of it, I was very very glad that I had chosen to lunch on this sandwich.
This, however, begs a question. How can it be, in this modern day and age, that the same product, made using the same instructions, from the same company, can go so horribly, horribly wrong? I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed the step-by-step instructions for everything ranging from subs to coffees to giving change, all plastered under the sneeze-guards or the cash register at your local McSub Jacks, or wherever it is you go. Surely, then, it is not so difficult for employees to follow the directions they are given. If you are making a sandwich for a customer, and they ask for tomato, carrot and beetroot, you do not put lettuce and onion on instead, do you? If they ask for extra cheese, I'm positive you can, at worst, follow the manager's guide to reaching into the cheese section and pulling out twice the number of slices as usual; staring blankly at a customer, and then ignoring their request, is not a valid response. And if I ask for bacon, you cannot expect me to eat it raw. Salmonella and E Coli might sound like legitimate ingredients for a Sicilian pizza, but I would not like them trading jokes with the turkey in my baguette, thank you very much. You see, I can read. And I can see quite clearly on those instructions stuck on the rangehood that the management expects you to microwave the bacon first. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but when something is meant to be cooked but is not, that is usually bad. With one 'd', not two, for those of you whose spelling is as poor as your reading comprehension. And what is the reason for this? Laziness, certainly. But a lot has to do with cultural background.
Now, hang on a moment before the politically correct police drag me, kicking and screaming, off into the dark, cold night. I am about to make some generalisations, and my argument is that one's cultural background, and specifically food norms in one culture, may not be compatible with others. This is not to say that one race is better than another. If you are able to understand the written word, you will appreciate this. So if anyone jumps on their high horse and gets offended, sucks to be you.
Now, it's common knowledge that some nationalities are more gifted in certain areas than others. Get Bill Jones from down the street to play table tennis against Zhang Li from down the street in Guangzhou, China, and chances are that Li will serve Billy Boy up on a platter, despite the fact that Bill Jones might be the Australian pingpong champ, and Li might be 12 years old. On the other hand, if Bill challenges Li to say "thank you", Bill will win this contest of obvious, eminent importance. In the table tennis example, the result is probably due to Li having been in training since he was two, while Bill competes every six months against people who play at the local RSL. By comparison, Li will say "sank queue", because he is unused to pronouncing English words, and his tongue just can't get around it. It's the same for food. Challenge three Indian sisters to make a kofta curry, and they will give you a mouthwatering feast. Challenge them to make a roasted chicken sub with five salad ingredients and mayonnaise, and they go to pieces. They will ignore your vegetable requests, they will ignore the need to microwave the chicken, and you will end up with a sandwich that resembles Chernobyl. Why is this? The answer, I believe, is that, generally speaking, not many people in India make American-style baguettes on a daily basis. It may, to me, seem like the most obvious thing in the world that meat should not be eaten raw or half-cooked, but is it so self-evident to someone whose only experience with western-style fast food options is the hectic lunch hour at the local food court? Maybe Red Subporto or other such companies should realise that their new recruits (not necessarily immigrants) are not actually aware of safe food practices over here, and provide more training. The manager at my local looked at me like I was lying when I told her that other "sandwich artists" had added raw bacon to my baguette, but no, I most definitely wasn't making it up, because the day before, in the same store, it had happened. So maybe management needs to stop taking it as given that all employees know what we routinely see as common sense, and start realising that maybe the new guy doesn't understand that the egg needs to be cooked all the way through, and that the meatballs should not be left stewing in tepid water for fourteen hours.
Then, perhaps, I can forget about safeguarding against food poisoning, and just enjoy my lunch.
Labels: current affairs
posted by bodie at
23:09
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