I’m really more baffled than outraged. I went to Panera for lunch today. I had what I thought was a simple order: The Pick Two deal, with a tuna sandwich and a mac & cheese. This resulted in the cashier punching ferociously at the machine for a while. I thought something was wrong right there: What I ordered was pretty much directly from the menu, with no crazy customizations or anything like that. Why did it seem to be so difficult? Once I got the receipt, it turned out that she had got me an almond chicken sandwich and a cup of broccoli & cheese. Huh? I can maybe understand confusing mac & cheese and broccoli & cheese, but how did she manage to turn tuna into almond chicken???
We did manage to straighten things out once I pointed out the error though.
My dad’s in the hospital. The first night he was so hungry that he had eaten half of a tuna salad sandwich before realizing that it wasn’t the turkey that he had ordered. Unfortunately right now he’s not allowed to eat anything at all. I bet he’d eat the tuna again if he could.
I love Panera. When I figured out I couldn’t tolerate gluten, I emailed them to see if they had any plans on offering gluten-free breads. They didn’t, as the logistics were too difficult, but someone sent me a list of all the gluten-free foods in their menu. It turned out to be pretty much all their salads and soups, which makes me very, very happy.
When I worked as a cashier for a bakery in college, I always messed up people’s orders. It’s a strangely high-pressure gig. So many buttons! And if you’re new and haven’t yet memorized the location of each button, you may just panic and hit whatever button is in front of you.
Now that I’m no longer in the service industry, I find myself getting so upset or fustrated with cashiers and other service-industry people, including call centers, for stupid mistakes like this… completely forgetting that I had once been in those shoes.
Then I found this website:
Workers post their hilarious interactions with customers. It’s great to see it from the other side, how insane we as customers can be.
Really? On average they’re one of the highest quality, most consistent salad, soup and sandwich vendors I’ve every seen. What in the world are you comparing them to?
I find that the bread is overpowering (texture and a weird aftertaste). Also, the meal also seems to leave an aftertaste (even the salad), as though every sauce they use has some odd component. So, I think that taste that I can’t put my finger on is what ruins it most for me.
There are a couple of local sub shops I prefere much more. One has incredible salads. The other makes the bread fresh and every sandwhich is great.
