Club Sandwich and Leah T.

When describing my career with Macy's, I usually say that I worked for several Macy's stores. I started in Albuquerque, then Vegas and then Sacramento. That is kind of true. The Sacramento store, however is truly in Citrus Heights, California. It's more of a suburb and the mall certainly reflected that. This was the largest store I worked in, actually, because it was two buildings- each three stories. Honestly, if Macy's didn't occupy those two buildings, there would not have been much reason to even visit the mall. Citrus Heights, California probably doesn't appear anywhere in the Zagat's Guide.

Our food court left much to be desired. Sbarro, Sansei, Taco Bell, and a Chinese place that did not have a popular name. Later, we all but threw a party when the Subway opened after having their "Coming Soon" sign up for over a year. There were few other places to eat within walking distance. On the other side of the mall, through the parking lot, we could eat at the Elephant Bar. We could sit down for what my friend Leah and I described as our "extended lunch." This meant that we did not feel like working that day and we would just not worry about what time our lunch ended. This was our way of being rebels and we thought we were pretty cool for taking the longer lunch period. Funny thing is, we never did extend the lunch. We meant to and we thought we were, but it didn't happen. Inevitably, the waiter would see our name badges or recognize us from the last time we were there and they would rush our food and rush to get us back to work. We would walk slowly back to the store, smoking two cigarettes instead of the normal one. Still didn't work and we would arrive back on time, disappointed that we were not the cool corporate rebels we so desperately wanted to portray. We were actually so pathetic about not being a rebel, we would end up telling our boss what we were trying to do and explain why it didn't ever work out.

We probably frequented the Elephant Bar twice a month. We would have gone more, but it seems our boss finally caught onto our close friendship and started scheduling us opposite of one another. It was rare that we could have lunch together and sometimes we would have to invite another manager along too. Each time we decided to go to the Elephant Bar, we would convince ourselves to order something new. It usually worked. Until we got to the restaurant. We both ordered the same thing: Club sandwich, add avocado, french fries and an iced tea. Every single time. It was about seven dollars and you couldn't beat that for a sit-down meal during the work day.

Around the time I was getting ready to transfer back to Albuquerque, we decided to go to Elephant Bar again. We got there and the club sandwich was off the menu. The very nice waitress explained that they had replaced it with a better sandwich. The turkey focaccia sandwich. Not our beloved club. We stared at the menu for at least fifteen minutes and the waitress checked back on us a couple of times before we eventually gave in and ordered the new sandwich. You would think the extra time we took to debate over the menu would have put us into the extended lunch time. It did not.

We don't like the new sandwich as much as the club and cannot understand how they can have over a thousand menu items but felt it necessary to remove such a classic lunch sandwich. The focaccia sandwich is not the same at all, but we do order it every time. We still do, even though we live in different cities and we text each other when we do order it. One time I texted Leah to tell her I was at the Elephant Bar, which is across the street from where I work now and she texted back that she was too. Sometimes you just have to take the "extended" lunch.