Fazoli's and Me

Dear Fazoli's,

I love Italian food. Unfortunately, being a resident of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, the least cosmopolitan city this side of the Ohio River, I am left with merely two Italian restaurants to choose from: Olive Garden, and Fazoli's. Even more unfortunate is the fact that one of these two restaurants--yours--possesses a chronic inability to serve their customers properly and in a timely fashion.

I realize that as a fast food restaurant, you are left to hire only the most incompetent dregs society has rejected and spit out, while the more skilled workers are cleaning spills in aisle six at Walmart, or delivering pizzas, so it is with a great sense of understanding that I overlooked multiple instances of inexplicable bumbling and ineptitude and kept returning to your restaurant. That and because, well, I'm an idiot.

It was my most sincere desire that it was an isolated incident of stupidity when I drove home from Fazoli's one evening to discover that the cretin who had prepared my sub had failed to include the lettuce, despite it being a time-honored and indeed a principal ingredient on these otherwise usually delicious confections. I begrudgingly consumed my bastardized sandwich anyway, rather than drive the 4 miles back to Fazoli's to wait an additional 20 minutes for the preparation of a Submarino with its proper components included.

If you are still reading this, I hope you will indulge me and continue to read this torrent of complaints I have unwittingly accumulated in the past several visits to your fine establishment, so that I can rest assured that there exists at least one employee at your company who can manage to perform his job properly.

Next, allow me to describe a young sixteen year-old server who may very well be the most oblivious and intellectually underprivileged girl this side of the San Fernando Valley. Although I must admit that it may not have been her fault when she was charged with the task of running the register without the necessary prerequisites, such as some basic training, or a cerebrum. The phrase "fast food" became a conspicuously grotesque misnomer as she struggled to find the buttons on the register corresponding with each menu item for subsequent customer after customer.

When I finally made my way up to the register, I ordered a Submarino and a dozen breadsticks. I was charged only $5.00 and suggested to her that she forgot to add the breadsticks to my order. She assured me that the breadsticks were free (in any quantity?), so it was with a sense of frustration that I acquiesced to failure ten minutes later and accepted a bag with only two breadsticks included, knowing that to obtain the dozen I wanted, I would have to waste even more time explaining my situation to a server with less brainpower than a toothbrush.

My most recent trip to Fazoli's involved a 15 minute wait from beginning to end in my foolhardy quest for the simplest order I could possibly devise: a dozen breadsticks, and nothing else. I suppose I should deduct up to five minutes of that wait from your culpability; rather, the blame probably rightly belongs to three cows in front of me in line who were preparing to embark on a feeding frenzy of gargantuan proportions in which they would no doubt gorge themselves on unlimited free breadsticks, a culinary commotion that undoubtedly will continue for the remainder of this evening.

Five minutes into my wait, I was finally able to order my breadsticks and assumed I would have them in my hands within 60 seconds, as there were two full trays of ready-to-eat breadsticks sitting out not eight feet away. This belief was founded on the even more moronic assumption that this 16 year-old server girl had, since our last meeting, gained the skills necessary to take an order, turn around and fulfill it herself. I guess I should also blame the two older workers who meandered around doing next to nothing while I stood there waiting for breadsticks that, it turned out, would have been easier to obtain had I made them myself from scratch. Ten minutes later, I finally managed to compel a random worker to perform the considerably difficult task of counting out 12 breadsticks and placing them into a bag so that I could go home and consume them at last.

In conclusion, I recommend hiring staff members who can perform customer service better than your current workers, e.g.; a team of trained apes, or non-English speaking illegal immigrants, both of which would have an infinitely greater probability of preparing my meals quickly and properly than your current employees, and additionally, would probably agree to work for you in exchange for free breadsticks. I am almost certain that bringing this situation to your attention is a tremendous waste of my own time when I could be doing something more productive, like playing with myself, an activity with which you at Fazoli's are undoubtedly both extremely knowledgeable and highly adept.

Thank you.