I know you've all been dying for a work story.

Toni, my dear roommate, you've already heard this, so you don't have to read about it all over again. Unless you miss my presence.

So, I worked tonight. I was doing really good on my list (we have lists we cross things off of when we do them) and I was even hoping to get ahead and make some stuff ahead so the opener wouldn't have to do so much work in the morning.

The phone rang, so I answered it. This is the conversation I had for twenty minutes. This whole time, there are people talking and laughing and yelling in the background, and music playing. I can hear black accents in the voices, which drawl so I can't always understand them, so there's a lot of repetition going on throughout this.

Me: "[name of street withheld] and [name of street withheld] Subway, this is Amber."
Lady: "Hi. Where are you located?"
Me: "On "[name of street withheld] and [name of street withheld], right across from Safeway."
Lady: "Do you have the number for [another Subway]?"
Me: "No, I only have numbers for [these two Subways]. Is there something else I can do for you?"
Lady: "Yeah, do you have any specials going on?"
Me: "Yes, we have a two footlongs for 8 99 deal, and -"
Lady: "Any two footlongs?"
Me: "That's right."
Lady: "I want that. How much is your chicken bacon ranch?"
Me: "A foot long would be [some price], but did you want to get two of them?
Lady: "Well, yeah, you said there was a special."
Me: "If you want two foot long chicken bacon ranches, it'll be 8 99."
Lady: "Then I'll take two of those, and two of those chicken clubs, and two-"
Me: "Hold on. We have five different kinds of chicken sandwiches, and our club sandwich has turkey, ham, and roast beef on it."
Lady: "Okay, talk to him about it."
(Phone is handed over.)
Second lady: "Hello, we want two Italians."
Me: "We have two Italian sandwiches, the BMT and the Spicy Italian. The BMT has pepperoni, salami, and ham. The Spicy Italian has pepperoni and salami. Which one did you want?"
Second lady: "What's the difference?"
Me: (I repeat what I just said)
Second lady: "I don't know, talk to him about it."
(phone is handed over)
Gruff guy: "Hey."
Me: "Um, hi. What kind of sandwich did you want?"
Gruff guy: "Chicken club."
Me: "[I explain again the chicken club dilemma and figure out what he actually wants]"
Gruff guy: "Okay."
Me: "Okay..." (wondering what will happen next)
(phone gets handed over)
First or second lady, not too sure now: "Okay, so two of those, and then two teriyakis and one, hang on, what did you say you wanted? I can't hear you! Oh, come on, they have all kinds of sandwiches, just pick one, come on. What do you want? Well, I don't know what you want!" Blah blah blah, etc.
Me: "So, how many sandwiches are you getting altogether?"
(no response)
male voice comes on the line: "Hi, how's it going?"
Me: "I'm really confused, honestly."
New guy proceeds to nicely tell me what everybody wants.

From that point on it was semi bearable. The thing was, I had so much trouble just figuring out what kind of sandwiches people wanted (there ended up being ten foot longs) and I still had to ask what kind of bread, what kind of cheese, toasted or not, vegetables, mayonaisse and mustard, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, wahtever. For EACH SANDWICH. do you underSTAND! ugh. So I would ask the guy the question, and he'd ask the person, who would tell him, and then he would tell me. I told them to come in half an hour and the subs would be done.

So, I spent twenty minutes on the phone. I spent the next half hour making the ten subs. It took me about 25 minutes, so that's like 2.5 minutes per sub. Pretty good, huh?

The lady came in about ten minutes late. Unsmiling, she told me she was here for the subs. I brought them out and said, "Do you want any chips or drink with these?"

She said: "What! They don't come with chips?"

Me: "No ma'am, not unless you're willing to pay extra. I told you the deal was two foot long sandwiches for 8 99."

She rolls her eyes. "But we don't have any chips!"

Me, getting really annoyed, especially after nearly an hour of my work time was wasted, meaning now I have to stay late to get my list done: "Feel free to buy some."

Her: "Can't you just throw in a few bags?"

Me: "Sure. How many would you like to buy?" (emphasis on the word "buy)

Her: "Buy?"

Me: "Ma'am, I can't just give you free chips."

She rolls her eyes and selects three bags.

Me: "Did you want any cookies?"

Her: "no."

Me: "Your total comes to [some total]."

She pauses, as if in deep thought. "Hey..." as if the idea just hit her, "how much are your cookies?"

She buys three cookies.

I ring her up. She counts her change, gathers everything up, and shuffles off without a word.

So. That was my frustrating experience.

The other thing is, we had nonstop customers during the time I was making the ten sandwiches. I didn't have time to stop and help customers, and I really hate being up front when there are customers waiting, because I get a "Why aren't you making my sandwich" feeling from them. I hate it so much that I didn't even make a sandwich for my own dinner when I left, because there was a line of people I already felt bad about leaving my coworker to deal with (but some guys from the school came specifically to pick me up and I didn't want to keep them waiting). I can just imagine some mean person saying "Why are you making yourself a sandwich? Can't you see that I'm hungry?"

Amazingly, I only stayed half an hour late, and I got done nearly everything on my list, though it was shoddily done.

I'm going to stop typing now, because blogger doesn't like me having a post htis long and my typing is incredibly and annoying lagged so that it takes FOREVER just to fix my typos!