To borrow from Michael Scott in the season four finale of the "The Office": "[The Hopkins Center] has been cruisin' for a bruisin' for a long time. And I am now its cruise director. And my name is Captain Bruisin'." I only needed a few weeks working -- and getting lunch -- in the real world (Boston in my case) this summer to be reminded of how truly awful the Hop really is.
Indeed, I long ago reached the point in my career at the College where the very thought of the Hop became enough to make my blood simmer. My feelings of contempt for the Hop have festered for years now, and if you ask any of my friends, you'd find that they're well-documented and perhaps even borderline infamous. Put simply, the Hop is the worst-run food establishment I've ever been to -- and yes, that includes Bagel Basement. If the following sounds like a rant, that's because it is.
My first and most serious grievance with the Hop is the unfathomably slow pace of the line at the Courtyard Cafe. Nowhere else have I encountered this degree of sloth in a queue -- except for at the registry of motor vehicles, and the fact that I even dare make this comparison speaks for itself. One time, the grill was being manned by a curmudgeonly employee for whom I have particular disdain. 'Not to worry,' I thought, given that there was only one person in line in front me. Wrong. This employee, who shall remain nameless, proceeded to take that student's order, fumble about for five minutes before even putting said order on the grill, and then cook it to completion without even so much as glancing in my direction. Then, and only then, did she take my order. A quick trip for an off-peak-hours meal had suddenly become a 45-minute ordeal.
At peak hours, the line moves only marginally more quickly than it did in my anecdote. Why? Well for one, despite the presence of three employees servicing the line at any given time, only the employee manning the grill is ever really doing any work. One employee is essentially in charge of toasting bread and cutting things in half, and the other's sole responsibility is to stand there and repeat what you have just ordered. Looks like someone better call McKinsey & Co., or better yet, just have the FoCo grill workers give their Hop counterparts a tutorial on how to keep a line moving.
When they're not busy making terrible decisions like getting rid of the juice machine or not offering to-go containers despite their wasteful reliance on plastic silverware, Hop managers pass their time thinking of ways to make the sandwich line rival the grill line in raising my blood pressure (and I don't mean from cholesterol). I have never, in all my years of frequenting sub shops and delicatessens, witnessed a sandwich being assembled so slowly. The deliberate, painstaking and unbelievably costive nature in which the employees place slices of meat, cheese and other accoutrements on the bread -- usually pausing midway to converse with coworkers -- is enough to make me want to gouge my eyes out. Finally, I'm granted the unwelcome pleasure of watching my freshly toasted sub cool off at the end of the toaster, while the person making it takes three other orders in the interim. This process is juxtaposed with the operation at my local sandwich shop, where I order a sub, the person who takes my order yells something in Greek or Italian to his cousin out back, and presto, I have a delicious sub in front of me in 45 seconds -- and for half the price, no less.
I know what you're thinking: God this kid is a whiner, can't he think of something better to complain about? Hold your horses; I'm not some aloof idiot. I know the world has a lot bigger problems than the Hop. But my gripes with the Hop cannot be judged in light of larger issues that dwarf it in comparison. My point is that I have been to food establishments in the real world as dysfunctional as the Hop and have not been incensed to the point of editorializing. What sets them apart from the Hop, however, is that they've all gone out of business. All that I ask is that the Hop be held to the same reasonable standards that other non-monopoly eateries must meet in order to keep customers coming back for more. Put another way, if I actually had to fork over cash out of my own pocket for such abysmal service, the first time that I ate at the Hop would have been my last. But hey, given that the powers-that-be at the Hop are probably in the process of blacklisting me as you read this, it looks like I may have eaten my last Billy Bob after all.
