Commuterrant

Bruegger's - A Corporate Sniffing Policy?

Last week, I urgently needed an Everything Bagel, so I went to the neighborhood Bruegger's. I was waiting in line while two Bruegger's employees behind the counter were discussing something. One, a young man, said in response to the other, "I don't know..." and picked up a scooper filled with cream cheese and brought it up to his nose, sniffing deeply. He said, "It's chive," and threw the scooper back in the vat. He then looked up at me, with a dot of cream cheese on his nose.

"Can I help you?" he asked, wiping his nose with his sanitary, be-gloved hand.

Eww. You just sniffed the cream cheese. Not only did you sniff it, you touched it with your nose. And you put the scooper back in the vat. There is now nose contaminating the cream cheese.

These are the thoughts that ran through my head while I stood there, mute. I kept waiting for him to acknowledge what he had done. But he didn't. I went ahead with my purchase (no cream cheese) and left.

...and then I remembered. Many months ago, my wife went to the same Bruegger's to pick up some bagels, as well as a muffin for one of the kids. She ordered a corn muffin, and the employee picked it up out of the basket and said to a colleague, "Is this corn or vanilla?" The employee took the muffin, held it up to his nose and inhaled. "Nope, vanilla," and tossed it back in the basket.

Since when did it become appropriate for food handlers to SNIFF the food they are handling? Is this a new company policy? The manager tells everyone during the morning pep talk, "Now let's go out there and sell some bagels! And remember, a sniffed bagel is a fresh bagel! Put your nose all over those bagels!"  Should I assume that there are boogers on my Bruegger's bagels?

The Lunch Truck - Only the Strong Survive

In an effort to strengthen my stomach before the family grand tour of China and Cambodia in July, I have been availing myself of the culinary delights offered by two lunch trucks near my office. They always have long lines (well at least one of them does), so I thought I should try it. They're convenient, they're cheap... why, they're ptoumaine-y good!

On day one, I purchased a fairly innocuous steamed chicken, noodle and broccoli dish, which was nice and simple. The second day, I decided to try something else. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, but I remember feeling only mildly queasy for the seven hours following lunch. On Wednesday, I decided to forsake my new favorite lunch truck and try the lunch truck next door. Both trucks serve Asian food, and both display health certificates, so I thought, "What could go wrong? I'm two-for-two!"

I chose a chicken-garlic-scallion combination. With the lunch truck, every day is like my birthday, as I bring the styrofoam container back to my office and have no idea what's in store when I open the lid. It's magical!

I opened the lid on this day and laid my eyes on the most horrific-looking pile of "chicken" I have ever seen. Said "chicken" was actually knobs of gristle and fat with minuscule amounts of dark meat. I moved the pile to the side so that I could enjoy the rice and the one piece of broccoli underneath. I considered eating the styrofoam container. After lunch, I had a rather uneasy feeling; what I imagine one might feel after accidentally eating a human foot.

Finally, on Friday it was back to the old, reliable lunch truck. I decided to order tofu with peanut sauce. After all, how can you screw up tofu?

I learned that you can screw up tofu... you can make it really mushy and wet, and then you can pour a gallon of peanut sauce that's the consistency of slightly warmed-up Skippy on it. Once again, I picked at the rice and ate the one piece of broccoli.

I think I am done with the lunch truck, as I believe my stomach can now survive anything. I now know that I can eat freely on our trip without worry, and will enjoy everything from street vendor meat-on-a-stick to live chickens.

Au Bon Come-On

One day last week, I went to Au Bon Pain with a couple of colleagues. It being a beautiful Spring day, I was wearing a bright orange shirt from the Gap, circa 2004.

While waiting for my sandwich, a woman behind me, also waiting, strolled to and fro while singing opera. And boy, was she was singing. Her voice, while subdued appropriately for a lunch hour sandwich pick-up, had this resonant, rich, professional-opera-singer tone. She was singing snippets of Verdi's greatest hits. In Au Bon Pain.

Suddenly and apropos of nothing, she said to me, "I love your shirt; it's so pretty. You look like sherbet."

While I appreciated the fact that she pronounced sherbet correctly, it frightened me to be compared to an icy, sweet desert treat by a total stranger, and one singing opera at that. If she had said, "your shirt looks like sherbet" vs. "you look like sherbet," that may have ameliorated my concerns. But her tone was frightening; she sounded hungry.

Please, May I Pay For Your Butter?

For the first time in my life, I had cause to ask that question today. I was at my default Dunkin Donuts at Alewife. There was a woman in line next to me, buying a combo #1 or something like it, which consisted of a sandwich of some sort. I used my powers of deductive reasoning to determine that she was homeless;  she was holding a sign under her arm that said "Homeless; please give what you can," was soaking wet from the snow and also happened to have a crutch under her other arm.

The Dunkin Donuts woman rang up her order, and the customer was incensed.

"It should be two dollars and eighty-two cents; that's what I pay every other day.

DD woman said, "No, it's more."

It turns out they were charging her for the BUTTER. "Why are you charging me for butter?" the customer asked.

"We always charge for butter."

"No, every day I buy this and you never charge for butter. And no other Dunkin Donuts charges for butter."

Clearly, they were at loggerheads and neither one was going to budge. I was getting totally stressed out. I pulled out a dollar; "Please, may I pay for your butter?" I asked, and she let me, thank God.

Dunkin Donuts, WTF? You can't spare one stinking pat of Land O' Lakes butter? What's gotten into you? Are you going to start charging for the sugar? The milk? The atmosphere? The straw? Jerks.

Dunkin Donuts: How May I Not Help You?

I recently started buying my morning gallon cup of coffee at the Dunkin Donuts at Alewife, and boy does it stress me out! It's like being at a cattle auction. There's no line to speak of; everyone just converges at the counter. And behind this tiny, MBTA-station-sized counter, there are about 78 employees, each of whom are handling one - and only one - part of each transaction. They continually have to bump into one another, reach around one another, and talk over one another. Each of them must spend their entire workday with a raging headache that even the most giant-sized turbo iced coffee cannot cure.

One employee asks me what I'd like. But I can't hear her over the other customers and employees who are all taking and placing orders at once. And is she talking to me, or the two people crammed up against the counter next to me? I tell her what I'd like. But she can't hear me over the other customers, so she has to ask 3 times to confirm my order. Then, while she's getting my coffee, another employee is at the register right in front of me, saying, "Four dollars and fifty cents." I start to balk at the expensive, MBTA version of an extra-large black coffee, but then I realize she's not talking to me, she's talking to the person behind me, who ordered 2 bacon, egg and cheese croissants and has since taken their place in line. Behind me.

Meanwhile, a different employee has gotten my coffee, but because they don't know who ordered it, confusion ensues. Is it my coffee? Your coffee? One person has just ordered a plain croissant, but an employee has called out "Bacon, egg, cheese croissant," thereby forcing the customer to correct them, when in fact, the employee was talking to the first customer who ordered the breakfast sandwiches. Meanwhile, the woman who just ordered the plain croissant looks confused.

To make matters worse, several feet away from this area there's another register. But no one ever seems to be working there. No customer ever seems to attempt to place an order over there. It's as if this lonely counter space presented too much promise of order and calmness, and so it was abandoned.

And I wonder if the complete lack of attention to logistics at this particular Dunkin Donuts was a corporate decision by the powers-that-be, an attempt to create a customer experience in a T station that mirrors the completely unpleasant experience of riding the T. Crowds. Chaos. Coffee. Croissants.

Chicago – Meat Kind of Town

I just returned from a 6-day business trip to Chicago. I love Chicago. It's a great city, and so friendly! Everywhere I went, I saw signs and banners reading, "Mayor Daley welcomes you!" Mayor Daley welcomed me to the baggage claim. He welcomed me to Michigan Avenue. He even welcomed me to American Girl Place. I expected to see a note of welcome printed on the disposable toilet seat liners: "Mayor Daley welcomes you - and your ass - to Chicago!"

In spite of my many trips to Chicago in the past, I never realized, until now, that it is a city obsessed with meat. Everywhere you turn, there are steak houses and chop houses. My meat-loving colleagues elected to go on a meat-seeking trek every night, and I (not a meat-lover but a somewhat flexible non-vegetarian) went along. What is this fascination with meat? I know that Chicago was once the proud hub of slaughter, but the last of the meat-packing plants closed decades ago, so can't they just get over it and move on?

I very rarely eat meat, but in Chicago, I had no choice. After my third plate o'meat in a row, my skin started to break out, my clothes no longer fit, and my heart was encased in lard. I bought a portable defibrillator and began carting it around with me, just in case.

One night, we wandered around looking for a restaurant and ended up at yet another steak house. Having already exceeded my yearly quota of meat through 2012, I decided to branch out and order the least beef-like thing on the menu, the Crackling Pork Shank with Firecracker Applesauce. Not being a meat expert, I did not know what a shank was, but I quickly found out, and would be happy if I never ate another shank for the rest of my life.

As far as the crackling, I pictured a flaming dish of pork being set on the table. And firecracker applesauce? I assumed that the applesauce would be "exploding like fireworks" with apple goodness. Well, the use of the term "crackling" must have referred to the fact that a fatty piece of pork was submerged in a vat of boiling lard, making a crackling sound that only the chef got to hear. And the firecracker-like quality of the applesauce was likely due to the lonely jalapeño pepper thrown on top. Who thought to put a jalapeño pepper in applesauce? They may as well have thrown some cat poop in there, for all the sense that food combination made.

The best part of all was the price. This hunk of fatty, inedible, deep-fried lard cost $35. And the waiter was thrilled to inform us that all was a la carte, so we got to pay $10 for about 3 tablespoons of a vegetable.

I think the Chicago tourism board needs to change their branding. Instead of  "Mayor Daley Welcomes You!" they should let us know what we're in for: "Welcome to Chicago! Enjoy our meat!" I have been teetering on the brink of vegetarianism for a while now, and I think this trip did the trick.

A Must-Have: Blueberry Cobbler Pretzel

Honeydew Donuts is now proudly advertising this. It's a Blueberry Cobbler Pretzel, along with a Blueberry Cinnamon Iced Coffee. Who thinks of these concoctions?  And what are they smoking?

Why does it have to be shaped like a pretzel? Why is it called a cobbler? Is it more pretzel-like or cobbler-like? Is it covered with sugar or salt, or both? After all, it is a pretzel, so I would assume it's covered with salt. Yet it is paradoxically also a cobbler, so perhaps it's covered with sugar. Or maybe it's covered with both!

And why are there blueberries in the coffee? I just can't imagine craving that, let alone not choking to death on a projectile blueberry sucked up through the straw. Are we supposed to buy the pretzel and the coffee together, for the ultimate in blueberry satisfaction?

Note the bowl of blueberries in the background. As if the blueberry pretzel and blueberry iced coffee are not enough to satiate even the most ravenous blueberry fan.

At the bottom of the ad, it reads "Other Pretzel Flavors Include Cinnamon & Pizza." Yummy! There's nothing I'd like better in the morning than a Pizza Cobbler Pretzel to go along with my Blueberry Iced Coffee. Or maybe they make Pizza Iced Coffee, too.

Starbucks and Feet - A Ghastly Combo

Yesterday, my coworker and I went out for our afternoon emergency caffeine infusion at Starbucks, where we spotted a man sitting at one of the coffee shop's outdoor tables. He was basking in the sunlight, enjoying the day, with his feet up on the table. His bare feet. And these were not ordinary bare feet, which would be bad enough. These were horror-show feet, Hobbit feet. I was repulsed, but I could not turn away. 

Big, hairy, calloused feet. Thick, yellow toenails, each surrounded by rings of soil. These feet had had a hard life. But here they were, enjoying a latte in the sun on Boylston Street, during the 3:00 coffee rush of customers.

He had them resting on the wrought-iron table like trophies, as if to say, "Behold, my majestic feet." He looked so comfortable, I wondered if Starbucks had hired him as a one-man, two-footed greeting committee.

Now I'm no foot model myself, nor am I a judge of foot-modeling contests, but I can safely say that these were the worst feet I've ever seen. And the fact that they were rubbing themselves all over the table of an eating establishment just doubled the horror.

I imagined myself as the next unwitting customer to sit at that table, enjoying my biscotti outside, my bare hands touching the table that those feet had touched.  And then putting my biscotti in my heretofore foot-free mouth...

Jesus God; I am never touching anything in or near Starbucks again. 

Shoes Required - But Not on the Counter

Time for another Dunkin Donuts story! I went into my neighborhood shop the other day for an iced coffee. The line was long; the place was packed. There was a woman at the counter ordering what must have been 72.5 Munchkins and 8 Croissandwiches, for all the time she took. Her hands were full; she had a lot going on, what with her purse, her wallet and her Munchkins.

She also had a toddler with her. And what do you think she did with her child while she was paying for her food? Why, she placed him, standing, on the counter. The child was standing on the counter of an eating establishment. The soles of said child's shoes were exactly where thousands of Munchkins are placed each day, before they are consumed by hundreds of hungry Dunkin Donuts customers.

I looked at the others in line to see if anyone noticed, if anyone cared. Everyone was glazed over, like the donuts they were waiting to order. I tried, like my fellow customers, to inure myself to the horror of it all but couldn't. Was I the only one affected by this? Surely, this violated the health code! Didn't the employees care? Do they stand on the counters, too?

Health-Code-Violating Parent, how could you think that it's okay to stand your kid on the counter? Why don't you just use the counter as a changing station? Go ahead; pull out a Wet One and wipe your kid's ass! And you can give the used diaper to the food-handling employee to throw away. Runny nose? How about a tissue, lady? You can wipe your kid's nose with it and throw it in the basket of everything bagels. Lice? Yes, let's check for head lice; that's a great thing to do in Dunkin Donuts. Here, you can use my comb. And don't get me started on pinworms...

Idiot. 

Battle of the Specialty Coffee Drinks

As previously predicted, Dunkin Donuts announced today their latest specialty coffee drink, the Arsenicaccino.  The Arsenicaccino is a delectable iced coffee blend with a generous helping of arsenic as a sugar substitute.  "Studies have shown that many of our offerings, such as Croissandwiches and Boston Cream Donuts, are slowly killing our customers," said VP of Product Development Deborah Nelson.  "We wanted to offer something for those who want to do the job a little more quickly, without worrying about those pesky, long-lasting and expensive health problems like diabetes and heart disease."

Starbucks quickly countered by announcing their newest offering, the Coagulatto.  The Coagulatto is aimed at  fans of the sinfully chocolate Chantico™ Drinking Chocolate, but with three times the  fat, four times the chocolate, and a dollop of whipped cream on top.  "It's absolutely delicious," noted Donald Harper, Starbucks VP of Beverage Experience.  "Chantico™ Drinking Chocolate has been a big hit with our customers, and we wanted to offer something to those who crave a bit more chocolate and richness than what the Chantico™ offers."