Fast Food Is Easier

I was running late to get to the radio station today, as usual, but stopped in at a sandwich shop to grab some lunch (the midday till 3pm slot makes lunch hard to manoeuvre). The same shop where a previous employee asked me if I’d like my schnitzel heated between his bun. Little did I know they’d had a staff change and renamed the shop to The World’s Slowest Sandwich Shop Ever.

As the huge sandwich maker crafted the two wraps for the mother and son in front of me, he seemed to obsess about every little scrap of carrot. When it was finally my turn I told him what I wanted, and he slowly walked around pondering which bread roll he might pick up. When he finally came back he picked up a knife and gently rubbed it against the side of the roll, almost as if he were trying to comfort it. As I told him which salad ingredients I wanted, he chopped them all up, and carefully positioned the roll into the right position so he could stuff in the thinly sliced beetroot. I thought about asking him to speed up, but I couldn’t work out how to do. Every wording I came up with sounded condecending, and I really didn’t want to be one of those people anyway. When eventually, just for the sake of time I told him I didn’t want any more things on my sandwich, he replied “Sure, I can do that.” I’m sure you can. Just do it quickly.

Wrapping the roll was as serious an occasion as serious as a surgeon trying to reassemble vital body organs. After all of this, he didn’t offer me salt and pepper. The real kicker was that because of his meticulous placing, the ingredients were all separated. “You enjoy that,” he said as I left. Sure.