Asshole of the Week

I had an unpleasant run-in with the jerk who runs the Grinders sandwich shop in Montclair yesterday. I’ve bought sandwiches there a few times before and was never impressed by the owner’s abrupt manner, but yesterday took the cake. I was in a huge hurry with ten minutes to get to my next student’s house down the street, but I was starving, too, so I decided to call in a sandwich so it would be ready to pick up when I got there. But I didn’t have the number, and I was a minute away, so I drove past to see the number on the store front, then called while I was looking for parking (anyone who knows Montclair, knows how hard it can be to find parking there at certain times of day.) I got the voicemail and left a message with my sandwich order. (I find it irritating to begin with that no one picks up the phone, that you have to leave your order on the voicemail not knowing how often they listen to it or whether they’ll get the message before you get there to pick up your order.) Halfway through my message, the guy—wait, first let me describe the guy—he’s a muscle guy, the kind that looks like he lives at the gym, and he often wears muscle Ts to show off his (ew) physique. His latest hair style is a chin-length shag dyed black and he looks to be about 45 years old (ew, ew). So halfway through my message he picks up and says, “We don’t take phone orders after 4.” I looked at the clock. It was 4:20. “Oh,” I said. “Well I’m right out front, but I can’t find parking.” In a rude manner, he responded, “I understand that, but we don’t take phone orders after 4 o’clock.” I was tempted then to go somewhere else, but since I was so close and so hungry, I decided to park and run in. I found parking, ran down the street to Grinders and went inside. There he was sitting at the cash register, doing nothing at all, while some teenager was stacking potato chips. “Why don’t you take phone orders after 4 o’clock?” I asked. “Company policy,” he said, “Didn’t you listen to the voicemail?” No, I hadn’t listened to the voicemail because I was driving and trying to park, and wasn’t HE the company? “But you could have made my sandwich while I was out there looking for parking,” I said. And this was his response. He leaned toward me and said, “You can have an attitude about it, but I SUGGEST you DON’T.” I felt like I was on the playground about to get my ass kicked. That was the way he talked to me. I just glared at him, shook my head and walked out. Needless to say, I won’t be eating at Grinders ever again.