what i really want to know is, why does starbucks insist on messing with a good thing?

we have... ahem... excuse me... HAD some delightful lunch sandwiches and salads in the refrigerated section of our pastry case. not all of them looked very appetizing, but they all tasted pretty darn good. starting yesterday, we have some of the old sandwiches, as well as some new ones, and although they look more inviting, they all taste... well... i wouldn't go so far as to say "bad", but definitely not as good as the others. the way they are packaged, the bread and the lettuce always get soggy, AND on the new sandwiches, strange condiments are added.

take, for instance, the new turkey and havarti sandwich. for those of you who don't know your cheeses, havarti is a cheese. i think. anyway, this supposedly screw-up-proof treat is served on thick nine-grain bread. you look through the packaging, you see the turkey, the cheese, the bread, and some lettuce. the unfortunate surprise doesn't come until you actually take a bite, unless you were alert enough to read the fine print.

you pause with a chunk of the sandwich in your mouth, not sure what to do about the peculiar taste you are sensing. you rack your brain in search of some past encounter you may have had with this unknown condiment to uncover its identity.

pickle?

no.

mustard?

definitely not.

zucchini?

umm... i don't think so.

and THEN it hits you square in the face, like an unruly kid with a tennis racket... there are slices of CUCUMBER on this sandwich.

now, maybe in seattle or the south or something, that's normal. where i come from, cucumbers in an un-pickled form are not just frivolously thrown onto sandwiches without warning. the only places where i've ever seen cucumbers as being a sandwich option are make-your-own-sub shops like subway, quizno's, potbelly's, etc.

it's not to say that i have anything against cucumbers. i mean, i don't particularly like them, but i cannot STAND them unexpectedly on a sandwich when i have not been given advance notice. moreover, they are completely inappropriate condiments to put on pre-packaged sandwiches because they, too, get soggy and make everything else in the sandwich taste like cucumber. so even if i peeled off the cucumber, i still can't get away from it, and in my personal opinion, it does not compliment the flavor of the turkey and the cheese.

whoever came up with that idea should be fired. i imagine it was probably the same person that thought "hey, we should put some nasty looking/tasting bacon on some of our salads and sandwiches to make it look like someone threw up on them."

sad thing is, that person with the *original* sandwich idea is probably making a lot more than i am.