This Level of Customer Service is Just What I Need on a Monday Morning
July 16, 2007 – 10:14 amThis morning’s experience at Cafe Metro, a sub-par bagel/sandwich shop below my office in Midtown:
Me: Can I have an everything bagel with veggie tofu cream cheese?
Employee: Everything bagel with scallion cream cheese?
Me: No, everything bagel with veggie tofu cream cheese.
Employee: Everything bagel lightly toasted?
Me: No, not toasted. Ev-ery-thing ba-gel with veg-gie to-fu cream cheese.
Employee: Okay. [begins to prepare bagel for the next 20 seconds] Sir, we do not have veggie tofu cream cheese today.
Me: Fine, I’ll have regular veggie cream cheese instead.
Employee: Regular cream cheese?
Me: No, regular veggie cream cheese. Instead of veggie tofu.
Employee: We do not have veggie tofu.
Me: I know, I said that veggie cream cheese [pointing to veggie cream cheese in cooler] is fine.
Employee: Okay.
Employee makes bagel. He toasts the bagel, despite the fact that I specifically asked him not to. I step away for a moment to get juice, but as he finishes wrapping my bagel to give to me, I notice that it’s not an everything bagel. Employee hands me my bagel, wrapped in foil. I unwrap it before going to cashier.
Me: Excuse me, sir, I ordered an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese.
Employee: Yes, that is an everything bagel.
Me: Uh, no, it isn’t. This is a cinnamon raisin bagel with… uh… veggie cream cheese.
Other Customer: That was probably my bagel, but I ordered a cinnamon raisin bagel with regular cream cheese.
Employee: [rolls eyes, takes bagel back] You had everything bagel with scallion cream cheese?
Me: Veggie cream cheese.
Employee makes bagel again, this time with Me watching him very carefully. The end result is actually exactly what I ordered - an everything bagel, untoasted, with veggie cream cheese. I think he just forgot to toast it on the second go-around, or just didn’t feel like dealing with me any longer.
My boss had been warning me for months that their service was incompetent, but I had never had any real problem there, until I came across this “other bagel guy,” who I had seen many times before, but miraculously managed to avoid entirely until today.
12 Responses
This is the very reason I gave up on eating bagels on weekdays!!!
By on Jul 16, 2007
My God, I got a headache just reading this…I’m sorry.
By on Jul 16, 2007
Bagel shop? We don’t have such nonsense in Kansas.
By on Jul 16, 2007
I worked at a Manhattan Bagel in college. Go easy on the bagel guy. He f***ed up your order big time but I’m sure he’s had his share of unwarranted abuse.
By on Jul 16, 2007
Is the guy wearing the mask on their website the aforementioned employee? Maybe that’s why he messed up your order.
By on Jul 16, 2007
I’ve come to realize that there has to be something about the nature of a bagel order that makes it impossible to execute without a fuckup. We’ve almost given up to going to the Bedford bagel store because no matter how clearly we articulate the order, and how carefully we check it when they give it to us, something is wrong, and we don’t discover it until we get back to Greenpoint. But it doesn’t matter where the bagel store is: bagelsmith has the same problem, the deli downstairs in my building can’t handle ‘toasted whole wheat with butter’ without fucking it up.
By on Jul 16, 2007
Similar things happened to me twice this weekend. At my local bodega, ordered a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich. Got ham instead of sausauge. And at that gourmet food store next to Mo Pitkins, the sandwich guy totally screwed up my order (after repeating it back to me correctly). Are people retarded or what?
By on Jul 16, 2007
your order was just too fancy for them
By on Jul 16, 2007
Tofu veggie cream cheese? Where did they ever get that?
I used to walk four blocks to the Dunkin Donuts for an everything bagel and veggie cream cheese and a LARGE coffee. Just reading this made me want one.
By on Jul 16, 2007
this was my morning everyday for the last year. it must be a bagel thing.
By on Jul 16, 2007
veggie tofu cream cheese?
By on Jul 16, 2007
In defense of my veggie tofu cream cheese order, cut me a break. I’m a total lac-tard.
By on Jul 16, 2007