Country Comes to Town

I don't know how I feel about it just yet, but I just had an amazing new fast food experience.

I forgot to bring food to work today--I intended to grab some soup or something out of the pantry on my way out the door, but I just plain forgot. I thought I could just subsist on coffee and water, but SOLICoffee just wasn't cutting it and I was really famished, plus, I need to get out and about more at lunch time--so I decided to drive to Arby's and get one of their nice deli sandwiches.

However, along the way, I noticed a Subway with lots of parking all around it at the very comfortable and easy to access corner of Spring and 10th.

So I went in...

People were milling about in a strange fashion. The early lunch time crowd of 20 or so people were moving a lot and I was hearing voices, but it didn't sound much like conversation. Everyone was looking down and very engaged in what they were doing.

So what were they doing?

They were using these new fangled self service kiosks to input their sandwich orders.

I was decidedly intimidated by the new machinery at first--I had experienced
a degree of struggle when the self service check outs were first installed at grocery stores. It was fine until there was produce (where the hell's the code) or beer (we need to see your id) and then it seemed the whole process would grind to a halt.

These things are really amazing, really efficient. My intimidation quickly evaoporated as I saw how fast the sandwich engineers were processing and completing orders and I was in and out of there in no time.

But...

Where's the love?

I like to get....light lettuce on my sub. I love a tiny streak of mustard combined with oil and vinegar just so. I want tomatoes on my sub, but only if they are looking bright-red and healthy.

With this system, I couldn't even get close enough to see the veggies. I want to hint and wink and maybe get a little something extra here and there from the restaurant staff.

So today, I miss Ms. Lulu from the Subway at Mercer. She was always there when I wanted to eat fresh--with a happy smile and a quiet, but very friendly and warm conversational demeanor. She moved very deliberately, and admittedly, sometimes I was impatient, but I never let it show. She slowly cut the bread and put the sandwich together with grandmotherly care. It was always worth the wait.

From Andy Griffith, Season One:

2. Season One: Episode 14, "The Horse Trader"

Knotts tells Griffith that when the town council holds their vote on what to do about the old cannon, he's definitely going to vote to keep it. "You don't like change, do you?" Griffith asks. "No I don't," Knotts replies. "You know when they put that stamp machine in the post office? That just frosted me!"