Andersen’s & Subway’s Food Logic? (At Parkway Parade)

I was given two ice cream mangoes from India. I was told to put them in the fridge and eat them with vanilla ice cream. As I only have chocolate ice cream in my fridge, I went to Parkway Parade yesterday to get the vanilla ice cream.

I went to Andersen’s Ice Cream and asked for a pint of vanilla bean ice cream, which happened to be the flavour of the month. The guy checked and said there wasn’t any. I went, “Can’t you scoop a pint from here (pointing to the full tub on display in the freezer)?” He replied, “No. It is against NEA regulation.” Various thoughts crossed my mind then. One of which was: if you are not allowed to scoop from the tub then how come you can do so for customers who just wanted a single or double scoops? Or did NEA say one can only scoop no more than twice at any given moment or from any given flavour?

I have bought ice cream from Haagen Dazs, Hokkaido and others, and none of them had told me they were not allowed to scoop from the display tubs in the freezers. I didn’t bother to rationalise with that guy and went to Cold Storage to get a pint of, yes, Andersen’s Vanilla Bean ice cream.

Several weeks back I decided to try the sandwiches at Subway at Parkway Parade. One of the signs said something like “add $1.50 for a salad” if you ordered a 6-inch sandwich. So I told the guy serving me that I would like to have the salad as well. He went on to explain that unlike other establishments where “add $X amount for Y” meant when you buy a particular first item you just needed to add an usually lesser amount to get a second item (in other words, upsizing, or value-added meals) “here” (Subway) it meant if you didn’t want the bread then you just needed to pay another $1.50 for the salad. In other words, exchange your bread for a salad and pay another $1.50 on top of what you were paying. I asked what sort of logic was that and if that was what it was supposed to mean than the sign was misleading. He went on to justify that “at Subway we sell sandwiches, we don’t sell salad”. I didn’t bother to rationalise with him further.

Would anyone want to buy and eat a sandwich without the bread? You might as well just ask for a scoop of tuna fish. And if you are so proud of your main food item then why bother selling other “secondary” food items? Anyway, the sandwich was nothing great – just plain simple sandwich. And with that kind of pricing, it was not worth it.