Taking the Subway Challenge

Hello to one and all. Let me begin by saying that this is the first of hopefully many restaurant reviews that I will be penning now and in the future. I am quite excited about the prospect of picking apart the dining industry and displaying its lows and highs as I see fit. I will do my absolute very best to be completely and utterly unbias in any and all reviews that I will write. On that note, however, I am not afraid to be brutally honest if I deem it necessary. For the time being, lets do this thing.......

On the 16th of November, 2007 I stopped for a bite to eat at a Subway restaurant located in Rice Lake, Wisconsin at 2022 Cenex Drive. This particular store happens to be one half of a building otherwise occupied by a Cenex convenience store. My time at this establishment lasted from 12:40pm to approximately 1:10 pm.

Upon walking into this restaurant my initial recaction was one of a positive nature. The place was quite well lit and the atmosphere seemed to be quite pleasant. The contrasting colors as well as the wall art were, for the most part, pleasing to the eye, and the room temperature was moderate enough to be labeled as comfortable. I and my family approached the "bar" where one would place an order as is common place at most Subway stores and we were blandly greeted by an employee that I will, for all practical purposes, call "Steve" (not his real name). I approached Steve and attempted to verbally relay my order. I fully expected him to pay attention to me (it IS his job after all) as I spoke aloud exactly what I wanted, but alas, and much to my dismay, the opposite seemed to be the case. As I called forth my order, this employee barely looked in my direction. His eyes constantly wandered, hiis head often turned to look in other directions, and it was painfully apparent that his mind was about as far away from any Subway restaurant as Jessica Simpson is away from becoming a legitimate actress. I repeated my order, or rather certain aspects of my order, several times over before Steve finally realized that he was actually clocked in and I was wanting to move closer to actually recieving my food.

Next, I stepped further down the line to employee number 2. Again, for the purposes of this artice I shall use a name that is not her own. "Shelly" had the task of loading my sandwich with whatever extras I would choose to have placed on it. Now, at most food service jobs, it is a requirement to keep yourself somewhat clean and proper looking. Hygiene is almost always a pre-requisite for employment and I have personally witnessed cases where certain employees were asked to leave for home to "clean themselves up" before they were to be allowed to return to work. This employee that I was currently dealing with honestly looked a mess. Her hair was all over the place and it was very obviously quite dirty and in need of a good cleaning. Possibly I am alone in my thinking of this thought, but an unkept employee can do a lot to sour an otherwise pleasant dining experience. The last thing I want is an oil encrusted greasy hair strand as a part of my meal. To her credit, however, Shelly did pay close attention to what I wanted and she was about as pleasant as anyone could have expected her to be.

At this point I was prepared to have my order processed so I could make arrangements to pay for it. This process went very smoothly indeed. I wrote a check, they asked if all info was current to which I replied yes and that was that. This was by far the easiest part of the process thus far.

I made my way towards the drink station with my thoughts leaning toward a cool drink of lemonade. At this point Shelly informed me that ice was not currently available, but the drinks from the spout were cold. This was a bit of a dissapointment to me, as I am quite the fan of ice floating in my drink, but it certainly was nothing to cause any kind of a wide spread panic. Upon pouring my drink I turned to look for a booth. Glancing around, I realized that amongst all the unoccupied tables and booths contained within the restaurant, all but one were a mess. My obvious choice was to choose the one clean booth.

It was not time to delve into my meal. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to grab any bag of chips that came with my meal so I quickly jetted over tot he display and grabbed any random bag of Doritos. I returned to my seat and opened said bag,only to find 80 plus percent of the Doritos were crushed enough to be considered crumbs. This is not exactly what I had hoped for, but nothing left to do but move on I suppose.

The sandwich that I ordered was a steak and bacon melt. My ingredient list is as follows:

12" Honey Oat bread
Steak
Bacon
Pepper Jack Cheese
Lettuce
Onion
Tomato
Green Pepper
Garlic Peppercorn Sauce

There were positive and negative aspects of the quality of my food. The quality of the bread was spot on. Soft to the touch and quite hearty and flavorful to the taste. The steak was well seasoned and the temperature was hot enough to please my standards of quality without scorching the inside of my mouth with every bite. The bacon tasted like, well, bacon. There is not much else to say there. I have always been a fan of pepper jack cheese, and this experience did not change that fact. The onions and green peppers were crisp and crunchy to the bite and overall quite satisfying. The garlic peppercorn sauce was a taste I had previously not experienced and I found it quite appetizing indeed. The quantity of the sauce complemented the overall sandwich just as I had hoped it would.

The lettuce was beginning to take on that brownish tint that does happen to even the best of lettuce heads over time and it would have been nice if that had been changed out before my sandwich was prepared. The tomatoes were beyond soggy and had quite an unpleasant slimy feel as they slid down my throat.

My final destination inside the boundaries of this Subway restaurant was the restroom. I did not exactly have to use the facilities, but I wanted to give it a once over as it is definitely an aspect that I believe needs to be reviewed as a part of the whole experience. The first thing I noticed was that the garbage can, which was quite large, all things considered, was stuffed to it's near breaking point and the inevitable overflow was strewn about the floor around the can. The mirror above the sink was dirtied up to the point of actually not being able to see much in it aside from the dirty spots and streaks that it was covered in. Also, someone at one point had slapped a sticker on the mirror and whoever had chosen to remove that sticker left behind all of the sticky residue that comes with such a process. A dirty mirror covered in the sticky resin left from an ill advised sticker placement and subsequent removal is not something that is pleasing to most customers. The two urinals were in decent shape and looked fairly clean. Inside the stall, however, I discovered somewhat of a different result. The john was disgustingly slathered in urine and feces. The sight of it alone made me a bit queasy. This to me was quite unacceptable. Most of the visible fecal matter was hard and crusted on. This told me that it had been there for some time and it had also been conveniently ignored. I am quite glad that my bowels were behaving themselves because I do not think I could have brought myself to use that facility.

My overall level of satisfaction with this particular restaurant could have been greater, but it was surely not the worst thing I have ever been a part of. I fully understand that employees are people and some days just turn out smoother than others or vice versa. Some things definitely could have been changed about the way things were done, but several aspects of my dining adventure were quite pleasant.

Now that I have dissected just about all there is to dissect, I will bring you my rating of each individual aspect of my experience and end with an overall score. I will choose to use a straw rating just for the sake of doing so. My rating will be based on a five straw system. The break down is as follows:

5 straws: Excellent
4 straws: Good
3 straws: Average
2 straws: Needs improvement
1 straw: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

Now on to the actual ratings:

Atmosphere: 4 straws

Store Cleanliness: 2.5 straws

Customer service: 2 straws

Quality of food: 2.5 straws

Bathroom: 1 straw

Now it is time to give this Subway an overall score. To determine this number I will simply average all the scores you see above. For anyone who is not mathematically inclined (myself included), the process requires me to simply divide the sum of all the individual scores (12) by the number of aspects scored (5).

This Subway restarant recieves an overall score of 2.4 straws.