#proximac

In days past I could carefully tear the tape, and roll out the wrapper on your luscious sandwich over my desk and have room to pour out my chips and have a sumptuous feast laid out for me. It was truly a slice of heaven. When I was done, I would crumple up that large flat wrapper and all the little pieces of lettuce and chip-dust along with it and viola! My desk is clean and I am ready to finish my day with a belly full of warm mesquite chicken goodness.

But today… Today I found out that you don’t use those perfect, oil resistant sandwich wrappers any longer. Now you use little paper bags.

My first thought was, oh, you’ve done something different, interesting! But then I watched in horror as the woman who was charged with adding the lettuce and wrapping my freshly toasted lunch tried to encapsulate said sandwich into the previously mentioned paper bag.

I had ordered a large sandwich, and perhaps this was my first mistake, but years of sandwich eating had left me unprepared for the carnage that I was witnessing. The lady, who had obviously attempted and failed before to place a large sandwich into your large sized bag, decided to cut my sandwich in half and place each half into the shorter bags.

They didn’t fit. Oh, the bags were long enough to be sure, but their girth was severely lacking. I think an actual tear ran down my cheek as I watched her literally smash the bread on my once perfect sandwich so that it could be inserted into the paper sack. She did so with a look of disappointment on her face; she surely knew what she was doing was an affront to humanity.

Quiznos, do you know what happens when you take a sandwich stacked high with chicken, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, mayonnaise, mustard and lettuce and you smoosh it flat? All of those toppings, hand-placed with care, begin to squeeze out the sides. I watched as at least a dozen pieces of chicken which I had paid for, escaped the bread and ended up on the rail. I would not get to savor those pieces. I would not get to taste them. They would not fit in your sack.

As I took my lunch and headed back to my office, I was not as happy as I usually am while carrying some toasty-goodness. At least the worst was behind me I thought, but I was wrong… so naively wrong.

As I sat down and opened the plastic bag I received my second shock of the day. One sandwich half, not willing to spend another moment in its brown paper prison had tried to escape. There was now mayonnaise covered chicken all over my bag of chips and my napkins. Unlike your previous wrappers, these sacks are not oil resistant. The warm mayo had saturated the bag and it split open down one side.

I tried to rescue my lunch, but the full disappointment of replacing a large square sheet with a tiny flimsy bag was to make its final mark. There was no longer something to cover my desk with and spread out my lunch. All I had was this oily paper bag, one per sandwich, and some already greasy napkins.

By the time I managed to eat, my desk looked like I had preformed surgery on it. Sandwich parts were everywhere. Lettuce on my keyboard, on my desk, on my floor… I’m sure you get the idea.

While the price of my lunch was still the same, my ability to enjoy it was seriously diminished by your desire to change. I don’t understand it. Are the paper bags cheaper? Are you saving millions of dollars per year by using the too-little sacks? Does one of the executives have stock in a paper bag factory? Why did you get rid of the square wrappers entirely? Wasn’t there enough room for both in our life? Less complicated sandwiches for paper bags, and large messy sandwiches could have the classic wrappers?