When Subway Restaurants first opened several years ago, they were met with great praise and popularity. I myself was a fan of these “healthy” fast food venues, and regularly got a foot long chicken teryaki sub on italian herbs and cheese bread.

However like many good things that start off with so much potential, Subway has deteriorated into a sub-par dinner option. Like many fast food operators, the downfall of the meals can be largely attributed to the staff.

In the beginning, Subway employed staff that were hard-working, bordering on perfectionists. From the way they prepared the food, it was obvious that they had vigorous training and been given strict instruction to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction.

Subs were put together with care, and each one was individually hand crafted by an efficient employee. Not the case any more. On a recent visit to my local Subway, I was quite appalled by the lack of enthusiasm and customer care. Firstly, I was asked numerous times whether I wanted my meal toasted. If they are going to ask me this, they should actually listen to the answer the first time. The lack of this shows a disconnection between employee and customer. Secondly, once the oven had “beeped” to signal it was cooked, the employee continued to work on a different customers sub, which she had started in between.

I’m all for efficiency, so was happy to have her work on another person’s meal while mine was warming. But the timing in the oven is very important, and it wasn’t until about 15 seconds after the beep that she finally took mine out of the oven. By this time, the bun was overcooked and not it’s usually texture. To make things worse, she then left it on the side, while continuing with the other customers meal. The customer who had been in line after me. So while she got the rest of her toppings and sauces added, my burnt sub was left to go cold.

Finally when she got back around to my meal, I got my salads put on. After requesting no salt and pepper and no sauce, she then proceeded to take the knife used on the previous customer and cut my sub. Being unclean, it obviously resulted in the previous persons sauce contaminating my own meal. Too bad if I was allergic to whatever they had!

I know Subway is like all fast food outlets, a fast food outlet, but for $9 for a simple roll with some filling, I would appreciate a decent level of care and thought going into my meal, or I will not be going back their again in a hurry. For dinner ideas it might be time to search elsewhere.

Side note. Why do so many fast food places serve such awful coffee? All it requires is for them to install high quality commercial coffee machines and the hard work is done for them. Many offices around Australia choose to use high quality machines for their employees so why can’t Maccas and the other chains improve theirs?