first time

For those of you outside the Philadelphia area, Wawa is a chain of convenience stores that, more recently, have focused on their sandwich, coffee and take-out foods business. With very few exceptions, most Philadelphians love Wawa and visit them often.

There are at least nine thousand Wawas within five minutes of the place where I work. Several times a month, I will stop at one of them to pick up hoagies for Mrs. Pincus and myself. (That might be the most Philadelphia sentence I've ever written!) Last Monday was one of those times.

I usually choose the Wawa at Route 73 and Remington Avenue, just down the street from Pennsauken High School (home of the still politically-incorrect "Indians"). A few years ago, Wawa introduced a convenient touchscreen system to make ordering sandwiches, salads and other prepared foods a breeze. The system is great. It's fast, accurate and requires little-to-no interaction with any other human being. Each step in the ordering process is given its own screen from which a hungry customer can select the type of sandwich, the type of bread, the type of ingredients, the type of toppings and even the amount of said toppings. (Although, the choice of "a little bit of mayonnaise" is still totally subjectable, leaving the customer at the mercy of a hair-netted, name-tagged, minimum-wage earner.) When the order process is completed, a little box spits out a barcoded receipt. The customer takes the receipt to the cashier to scan. The customer pays and returns to the order area to pick up the tightly wrapped sandwich, usually ready and waiting. Regular customers of Wawa are used to the whole procedure and engage in it often. I know I do.

The whole touchscreen system is very intuitive, even for the most technology-fearing customer. This past Monday, while I punched out my selection for two hoagies, I overheard a guy at another touchscreen terminal. Actually, everybody in the place overheard this guy. He was screaming. 

I have noticed that people who insist on talking on their phones everywhere they go, love to scream. They have no issues with discussing personal issues — at top volume — while casually walking down the street, sitting on a bus, standing in a checkout line at Target or just about any public place. Well, this guy in Wawa was screaming into his phone. As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that he was ordering hoagies for someone who had never eaten a hoagie before. It was not clear (but it was a distinct possibility) if the person on the other end of the conversation had ever seen a hoagie. Perhaps these two — the guy at Wawa and his unseen conversation partner — were new to the area. Perhaps they just moved here and were unfamiliar with the local delicacy known as "the hoagie" and how Philadelphians place it in the same esteem as soft pretzels, "wooder oice" and — yes! — Benjamin Franklin and the "Liverty Bell." I would have given this pair the benefit of the doubt — except the guy was sporting a Phillies cap and an Eagles "Super Bowl Champions" t-shirt.

The conversation went a little like this...

GUY IN WAWA: What size hoagie do you want?

VOICE ON PHONE: Size? What do you mean "size?"

GIW: Size! Six inch? Ten inch?

VOP: Well, how big is the ten inch?

GIW(rolls his eyes and stares at the phone): TEN INCHES! Y'KNOW... LIKE TEN INCHES LONG! Y'KNOW BIG!

VOP: Um, then, six inches, I guess.

GIW: What kind of hoagie do you want?

VOP: Well, what kinds do they have? Do they have chicken salad?

GIW: They have the regular kind that everybody has.

VOP: Do they have Italian? Can I get an Italian, but with chicken salad?

GIW: What? No, they don't have chicken salad! You just want an Italian hoagie, then?

VOP: Well, what's on an Italian hoagie?

GIW: I don't know! I guess the regular stuff that's on an Italian hoagie anywhere!

VOP: Do they have cheese? Can I get cheese? Do they have Swiss cheese? Can I get Swiss cheese on my Italian hoagie? You say they don't have chicken salad? I really wanted an Italian chicken salad hoagie.

At this point, the GIW walks — no! stomps! — away from the touchscreen area and ducks down one of the merchandise aisles. After a minute or so, he emerges, still speaking into his phone at the very top of his voice.

GIW: ... you can can get lettuce, if you want. Yes, and tomatoes. What? No, they don't have chicken salad.

The number on my receipt was called and my hoagies were ready. I picked them up and left.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

time has come today

I love Wawa. As a life-long resident of Philadelphia (and now the Philadelphia suburbs), I believe it is my duty as a citizen to love Wawa. Wawa has stores throughout the Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area and have recently expanded to include locations operating in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Florida, Alabama, and North Carolina — with its corporate sights set on Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, New York and Connecticut in the near future. If you don't live in one of these lucky states, let me explain what exactly Wawa is.

Wawa is the greatest convenience store there ever was. Wawa runs circles around places like 7-11 (except for Japanese 7-11s, which, by all accounts, rival Disneyland). Sure, Wawa sells a smattering of groceries for those who run out of something-or-other and need to fill in before their next supermarket run. Yeah, they sell pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for a little over eight bucks, but Wawa is not a grocery store. Wawa is Wawa! it's a place to stop for great coffee and a fresh packaged baked good on your way to work. It's a place to grab a pre-made sandwich or snack or salad or — better yet — get a custom-made sandwich or hoagie from their innovative (and intuitive) touchscreens. Over the years, since Wawa introduced the made-to-order system, they have branded themselves as the "go-to" place for quick-serve meals. It's become as "Philadelphia" as The Liberty Bell, chucking snowballs at Santa Claus and soft pretzels.... oh! and they have soft pretzels, too. Sure, there are a lot of people in Philadelphia that do not like Wawa — some of whom I know personally, but I still choose to remain friends with them. 

Wawa's hoagies are just fine, as far as I'm concerned. Granted, as a vegetarian, my choices are limited. I switch between a mixed cheese, tuna and roasted vegetables varieties — three choices that die-hard Philadelphia hoagie aficionados will tell you don't belong anywhere near a hoagie. I cannot speak on behalf of any of Wawa's "meat" variety of hoagies, so I will not pass any judgement. Their custom-made salads are good, too. Wawa has added a number of different sandwich options to their menu, including paninis, quesadillas (with customers readily pronouncing both "L"s in that word) and wraps. They have also bolstered their expanding menu with breakfast options like oatmeal and egg sandwiches. More recently, Wawa has begun to offer milkshakes, smoothies, and whipped cream topped coffee beverages that rival Starbucks. Plus, their "annual hoagiefest" seems to pop up way more than "annually."

A few months ago, Wawa introduced pizza to the Wawa stable of made-to-order fare with a campaign they mounted as though no one in the Philadelphia area had ever heard of pizza before. (Full disclosure: Aside from the various national pizza chains that dot the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia boasts a "Mom & Pop" pizza place approximately every fifteen feet.) Nevertheless, Wawa sang the assured praises of their pizza, flooding the area with billboards and commercials and plastering their stores with the simple mantra: "Wawa has pizza!" The phrase was ubiquitous. It grew to sound like a threat. It was apparent that Wawa spent a ton of money outfitting their stores with some sort of pizza oven (these were concealed "in the back" and out of customer's view) and training their minimum-wage employees in the fine art of the culinary preparation required to produce a pizza that Wawa would be proud to put its name on. (For a frame of reference, Wawa has no problem with feeding customers macaroni & cheese or soup out of an 80 ounce food service bag, so their sense of "pride" is questionable.) Needless to say, local pizzerias have nothing to fear.

Mrs. Pincus and I do not fancy ourselves as "food connoisseurs." We like what we like. We don't frequent pretentious restaurants. And we are fine with getting hoagies from Wawa a few times a week. It's convenient, relatively inexpensive and a stop on the way home from work only takes about twenty minutes. Our interest was piqued by Wawa's big pizza "roll out." So, when the good folks at Wawa offered one of their pizzas for five bucks (if ordered through their easy-to-navigate app), we were all in. Hey, I've eaten Little Caesar's pizza and I am convinced that there is no such thing as "bad pizza." So, five bucks was good enough for us to give it a try.

Wawa's pizza is okay. Just okay. It's kind of like the pizza you got in the cafeteria in elementary school. Not horrible. Not terrific, Just.... well.... okay. We ordered, and picked it up at a nearby Wawa. (We live in close proximity to four Wawas, all about the same distance from our house.) When we got it home and opened the box, it looked just like the pizza they display in their commercials. Perfect! Perfectly golden brown crust. Perfectly yellow-y cheese melted in a perfectly symmetrical circle equidistant all around from the crust, with a perfect border of red tomato sauce serving as a barrier/border between the cheese and the crust. It looked fake. I'm sure you've seen those videos of how they used food-like alternatives in commercials to showcase food products — like motor oil in place of pancake syrup or white school glue in place of milk in cereal or mashed potatoes (that won't melt under the studio lights) in place of scooped ice cream. Wawa's pizza appeared to be a reasonable facsimile of pizza. It tasted..... okay. Without the special deal, a Wawa pizza is fifteen dollars. I can get a larger, better tasting pizza for nineteen dollars just a few doors down from a Wawa near us.

Well, Wawa started offering us five bucks off the price of a pizza (when ordered through the app) nearly every weekend. So, I buckled and ordered on a Saturday evening. When the total was calculated, a full ten dollars was deducted from the price, leaving a final total of just five dollars. I selected the time I'd like my order to be ready from a list of times broken down in five minute increments. I also elected to have the pizza brought out to our car. I clicked and clicked and clicked and my order was placed. We arrived at Wawa #8080. We parked and — through the app — I let Wawa know in which numbered space we were parked. Several long minutes after our selected "ready" time, a Wawa employee emerged from the front doors carrying a large pizza box. He walked right past our car. My wife and I looked at each other. Mrs. P started the car and we slowly followed the guy with the pizza as though we were looking for an address on an unfamiliar street. He took our pizza on a little stroll and turned the corner of the building, headed back to the front door. Before he went back inside, Mrs. P called out, "Hey! Is that our pizza?" The guy adjusted his Wawa visor and asked, "Order for Josh?" Mrs. P replied in the affirmative and he handed over the pizza. We got it home and ate it. It was fine. Maybe a little overdone this time. Someone didn't read the training manual as closely as they should have.

In subsequent weeks, we began to order pizza from Wawa nearly every Saturday. We kept getting offers for five dollars off and they kept miscalculating the discount, leaving a grand total of five dollars. However, even after choosing a "ready" time in the app, I have had to wait at least twenty minutes for my order. Each time. Sometimes, I had to flag down an employee to check the status of my order. The employee's report of "it'll just be a few more minutes" was always punctuated with an apology. They seemed to be used to the question and accustomed to rendering apologies. After a few incidents of waiting too long for an "okay" pizza, I switched Wawas. 

I decided to give Wawa #8066 a chance, placing my "usual Saturday usual discount" order. I arrived a few minutes before my selected "ready" time. The sandwich makers were busy making sandwiches. Customers placed orders and picked up their orders as I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, a Wawa employee started refilling shelves near where I was impatiently waiting. As he got closer to me, he asked, "How are you today sir?" in a very "customer-service-y" tone. I told him I was waiting for an order that should have been ready fifteen minutes ago. He aske for the order number and promised to check the status. He disappeared behind the sandwich prep area and quickly returned with a solemn look on his face. With the somber demeanor of a surgeon delivering adverse results to a grieving family in a hospital waiting room, he said, "They're remaking your order. It stuck to the pan and they weren't happy with the presentation. I'm sorry. It'll just be a few minutes." It was fifteen more minutes. Ultimately, he handed me a warm pizza box along with another apology. I wonder if "apologies" are the final chapter of the "How To Make A Wawa Pizza" instruction course. I brought the pizza home. It was fine. Maybe a little burnt in some places and the cheese was placed a little unevenly, but it was fine.

Once again, Saturday brought another pizza discount from Wawa. Mrs. P and I gave in to the offer. I would be giving Wawa #0276 an opportunity to redeem the good name of Wawa. I placed my order as I had in the past, selecting my "ready" time as 5:40 PM, giving me enough time to pick up my pizza and get it home before the 6:05 start of the evening's Phillies game. I arrived a few minutes ahead of 5:40 and waited. At 5:39 on the dot, a guy behind the counter stopped what he was doing and retreated to the unseen "back," returning with a pizza box a few seconds later. I approached the glass separating the customers from the workers and pointed to the pizza. At 5:40 exactly, he place the pizza box in my waiting hands. After a little trial and error, I think I found the correct Wawa.

This pizza was okay. Maybe a bit more overdone that it should have been. Maybe the cheese had shifted a bit to one side. Maybe the crust was a little dry in places and chewy in others. Maybe the slices were uneven and not cut all the way through.

Maybe Wawa pizza isn't really that great. Maybe it really isn't even that good.

But I do love Wawa. Just like Bryce Harper. I bet he doesn't have to wait for pizza. I bet he doesn't get pizza from Wawa.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

what's new

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new car to replace a car that served me well for nearly twenty years. While doing a little online research before making my purchase, I discovered that the technology available in cars has advanced greatly in twenty years. When I bought my Toyota RAV4 in 2004, my biggest concern was that it had both a cassette deck and a CD player. I didn't know a thing about anti-lock fuel injection or anything else that went on under the hood — nor did I want to know. As long as I knew which side of the car allowed access to the gas tank for self-serve fill-ups (an activity of which I am not too crazy about performing), I choose to leave the down-and-dirty "car stuff" to the experts.

My Toyota RAV4's entertainment center came equipped with a cool little feature that I found fascinating. (Remember it was 2004!) When a CD was inserted into the player, a press of the "TEXT" button on the console changed the monochrome digital readout to display the name of the song, sometimes scrolling across the panel if the text contained a lot of characters. This was cool, in my easily impressed opinion. (As a frame of reference, I was mesmerized by the first fax machine I witnessed.)

Eclipse.

After several purchases from Toyota, I decided to give Subaru a try. I had been very pleased with Toyota's products. Over the years, my wife and I bought four of them and the local dealership from which we made all of those purchases was great. Nice, no-pressure salesmen. Helpful and respectful service department. They were responsive and accommodating. However, recently, their customer service began to show signs of slipping. My wife had to return a day after some routine maintenance because a technician forgot to tighten something that caused the door to the glove compartment of her 2018 RAV4 to fall off mid-drive. A week later, she noticed her driver's side headlight was out and the dealership was less than accommodating in her efforts to replace it. What turned out to be a five-minute process by a neighborhood mechanic required an all-day appointment with our Toyota dealership.

I had heard good things about Subaru, so I thought I'd give them a shot. I am not a fan of the "haggling over price" part of buying a car and that process is nonexistent at Subaru. There is a price on a sticker affixed to the windshield of every car and that is the price. Of course, they will discount the car further with a trade-in vehicle, but there's no "what if I pay cash" incentive or "what's your best price?" nonsense. The price on the sticker is the price... and if you don't like it, you get a shrug, a smile and a point to the door. My wife and I discussed what we wanted to spend and my internet research led me to the Subaru Crosstrek, a model that was comparable in size to the RAV4 with which I had been so comfortable. A salesman directed me to a 2024 model on their lot. After a brief walk-around introduction, I eased myself behind the wheel, pressed the "START" button (No more ignition keys! When did that happen?) and took a few spins around the dealership's large parking lot. That was all the convincing I needed.  A few minutes later, we were signing paperwork and making arrangements for me to pick up my brand new car on the upcoming Saturday.

When my Saturday appointment came, my wife and I drove my RAV4 on its last journey under Pincus ownership. I relinquished the title to the business officer at the Subaru dealership. After exchanging handshakes and receiving a several "congratulations," I was led to my new car, ready and waiting in the safety and security of the showroom's sparkling-clean garage. (I never understood the "congratulations" from the sales staff when completing the purchase of a new car. It's not like I won the car. I was paying for it. I don't recall getting a "congratulations" from a supermarket cashier on my purchase of Cheerios.)

Before the garage door was lifted and my life as a Subaru owner began, I was introduced to Eric, the "tech guy" in Subaru's service department. Eric, a friendly young man, took a place in the passenger's seat and highlighted the finer points of the newly-redesigned 2024 Subaru Crosstrek's dashboard.

This is a stock photo.
My car will most likely never see mountains.

He ran through the various buttons and levers and mini-joysticks that surrounded the driver's seat. If I didn't know better, I would have thought I was getting my first lesson in piloting a helicopter. Eric helped me link my new car to my cellphone via a Bluetooth connection, technology that did not exist last time I bought a car. (My wife's 2018 vehicle accommodates Bluetooth, but just for phone calls. In six short years, the advancement is mind-boggling for someone of my age group.) He explained all sorts of neat little features that could be accessed by a few touches on the large screen that occupies the center spot of the dashboard. Radio, media player, phone, even air temperature can be controlled from the virtual buttons on the extremely-intuitive and futuristic-looking touchscreen. Eric ran through his little lesson with breakneck speed, pointing and expanding at a rate that I really couldn't keep up with. When he finished, he added that if I had any questions, I could come back and he'd be happy to answer them. As an incentive for a return visit, he offered a $25 gift card to be used at Wawa, the legendary Philadelphia-based convenience store chain that runs circles around your Sheetz and Seven-Elevens. Upon hearing that offer, I happily made an appointment for two weeks from my Saturday pick-up day.

I drove my car for two weeks... mostly — if not exclusively — to work and several supermarkets. Actually, on Day Two, I drove my son and his girlfriend to their respective center city Philadelphia homes, all the while showing off the cool stuff my new car could do. 

I returned for my second "orientation" appointment yesterday. I was greeted by Eric who asked me how I was liking my new car. I told him it was good, much better — and much, much different — than my RAV4. Not being a "car guy," a lot of what Eric explained to me sort of went in one ear and out the other. I do remember being told that the headlights are so advanced that they actually turn toward the direction of a right or left turn to light the way. At least that's what I think I heard. Once inside the car, Eric scrolled through a slew of options available under the category of "Driver Assistance." He explained how to activate each one and described how each one worked. He pointed out three little buttons at the bottom of the rearview mirror that can be programmed to operate a garage door opener. I told him I do not have a garage door opener because I have no use for a garage door opener because I do not have a garage. I also told him that I almost needed his assistance in getting music stored on my phone to play through the speakers in my car. Thanks to YouTube, I was able to watch a video that walked me through the fairly simple procedure.

Gotta hava

Over the course of twenty minutes, Eric gave me lessons in a number of things that I could activate at the touch of a few buttons. I nodded as he explained what each feature did, but honestly, I nodded when my eighth grade math teacher explained integers to me. Finally, he sounded as though he was wrapping his little spiel up. He said if I had any additional questions that I should not hesitate to contact him at the dealership. Then he presented a clipboard and pen before me and requested my signature. After I signed, he handed me a Wawa gift card, as promised — the real reason I made this appointment. As he surrendered the shiny piece of plastic, he told me it could be used for snacks, sandwiches, coffee, anything that Wawa sells. (Dude! I know how a gift card works! I may not understand rack and pinion assisted brakes, but I've been to more Wawas than years you've been on this planet!) "Thank you." I said.

As I pulled away in my brand new car, I turned off two of the options that Eric turned on.

And I headed for Wawa.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com