No Sandwich for me

I just got back from a great weekend of snowboarding at Whistler.  I was still sporting a sore leg from last weekend’s misadventures in the terrain park, but luckily I didn’t add any new injuries this time.  Malcolm was not so lucky, as the 12 stitches in his chin can attest.  He hit a rock while mountain biking the evening we arrived.  Being a crazy limey, this did not stop him from racing the next morning.  It was not his weekend though: he wiped out again when he bent his front rim whilst landing a jump. 

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My only misadventure of the trip didn’t happen on the ski hill.  Rather, it happened on the way up to Whistler when I tried to buy lunch from the Garibaldi Mountain deli in Squamish.  They had a lunch special: a sandwich and salad combo for $6.95.  Because bread does not agree with me (possibly because I have some sort of sensitivity to wheat flour), I asked for a roast beef sandwich without any bread.  The lady helping was not impressed, saying “that’s more than what we normally do.”  I told her just to pile the sandwich ingredients on a plate.  I was surprised when she weighed out the roast beef and cheese and wrapped them separately.  When it came time to pay for my breadless sandwich, she rang it up and said “That will be $15.72.”  I drew her attention to the sign stating that the sandwich/salad combo was $6.95.  She looked at me with irritation, pointed at the plate of roast beef (wrapped in celluphane), cheese, tomotoes, and lettuce, and said “that is not a sandwich.”  I told her she could just give it to me on a bun and I would remove the bun myself.  She called over her boss, saying “this customer has a complaint.”

The boss was more fearsome than the Seinfeld soup Nazi.  He was livid.  He told me if I ordered everything separately, I would have to pay for everything separately.  I asked him why he couldn’t just give me a bun and charge me $6.95.  The lady who had been helping me earlier chimed in and said “we’ve already gone through all the extra work.”  She was definitely not on my side.  I was thinking “what extra work?”  Wouldn’t be even easier to make a sandwich without the bun than with the bun?  The sandwich Nazi looked at me as if I were a thief and told me that I hadn’t ordered a sandwich.  He said something in German, threw up his hands, and stormed into the back.  I was hungry.  I handed my credit card to the woman who had been helping me earlier, resigned to paying the extra cost for not having a bun.  I persisted one more time saying “Can’t you just put in on a bun for me?”

She angrily took the plate back and said “Do you want whole-wheat or multigrain?  I guess it doesn’t matter.”  She spent a bit of time putting all the sandwich fixings onto the bun which she put down on the counter in front of me.  Then she went back to the register and rang it in again.  She said, “that will be $15.10.  Congratulations, you saved 64 cents.”  I must have had a look of pure shock and confusion on my face, because without me saying anything she snatched the sandwich off the counter and thrust my credit card at me.  She said, “I think you’d be happier eating somewhere else.”

I walked right out of the deli and went across the street to Burger King and ordered a chicken ceasar salad.  It cost me just over $6.     

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