Contact Us... Don't mind if I do.

Once again, to exercise my rights as a consumer, I am filling out a "Contact Us" form. This time, it's a sub-shop. I will remove the name to protect the franchise owners out there who do a better job than this particular one. As always, I will let you know if I hear back from them.

Dear Customer Care,

My wife and I both spent a significant portion of our lives in New Jersey. Your restaurant has always been a treat for us.

For a few years, we exclusively visited your franchise in the Village Commons Shopping Center. We have had nothing but positive experiences there. It's still the best cheesesteak I can find here in South Florida.

Unfortunately, whomever purchased your franchise in the "Shops of Boynton" is besmirching your good name and doing your brand and its customers a great disservice.

Last night, we stopped at this particular location to order a Philly Cheesesteak and a Chicken Philly. We were on the way to an appointment, so we had to eat in the restaurant.

The first disappointment is that they were out of white bread. All they had was wheat bread. That kind of defeats the purpose for me when ordering a cheesesteak. I generally associate wheat bread with foods not quite as delicious as cheesesteaks.

There were four people working in the store at the time. One was making the sandwiches, taking orders, ringing people up, and taking care of some obvious pressing personal business on her cell phone.

Another employee seemed to have one purpose: to take the completed sandwich and wrap it in paper. I can't really criticize her performance, because she was able to properly wrap each sandwich in paper, but it did seem a bit inefficient to me to have such a laser-focused specialist working on this one task while other customers waited for their various sandwiches on wheat bread.

The other two employees were just shuffling around in the back the whole time. One had a broom. The floors were pretty clean, but I guess I would have traded some floor debris for some fresh-baked white bread on the premises.

As the woman made the sandwiches, she chatted on her cell phone the whole time. At one point, the sandwich-wrapper showed her versatility by actually holding the phone to her coworker's ear for her while she prepared our dinner. At other times, her plastic-gloved hand was buried in her hair, holding the phone with the same hand that would soon touch the same food that would go into our mouths.

Once we had our sandwiches, after a very long wait, I asked for ketchup to enhance the cheesesteak and mask the taste of the wheat bread.

They were out of ketchup.

I heard the customer behind me ask for soup, right about the same time I realized I was going to eat a ketchup-less cheesesteak on wheat bread. You guessed it... they were out of soup.

Maybe one of the three remaining employees could have run to the store at some point during this night. Considering it was Monday and there were only 2 or 3 other customers in the store, I can't imagine when this huge rush occured that depleted all of these necessary supplies.

I've eaten more cheesesteaks in my life than I'd care to admit. Sadly, this was the single worst experience I've had, and that includes Steak-Ums.

As I mentioned before, this has always been a treat for us, but I'm sorry to say that we won't be subjecting ourselves to this "treat" again.

Sincerely,
The Undaground