(Warning to Merlin: This post may revive some traumatic memories.)
My manager is off on holiday in China so I’ve been doing closing each day which means I’ve had to do all of the daily paperwork at the end of each day. It also means that Tuesday night I had to do inventory myself. The paperwork isn’t that bad, but doing inventory is a pain in the butt.
The newly promoted assistant manager has been taking care of opening most days, but on Wednesday he had the day off too, so I had to do opening and closing. Otherwise things have been running pretty smoothly.
Today we got a bit of a shocker. The main Subway office notified me of a complaint by a customer they had received. Let’s just say that the customer found something in the sandwich not normally included on the menu. It was also quite surprising because the additional ingredient is not normally seen in our shop and also is something that would be kind of hard to overlook when making a sandwich.
Once my wife contacted the customer the story got even more bizarre with her claiming things that couldn’t possibly have happened at our store. Eventually the customer changed stories and said it happened at a different Subway store. I still have my doubts about the whole episode. It’s a good thing that Subway has training on handling such incidents.
A few days ago I got a schedule of radio ad spots for Subway. Tonight we finally heard our first ad on “Hit Radio”. The advertising for Subway in Taiwan hasn’t been all that great, so it was nice to see some advertising show up.
There’s a new shop going in two doors down from us. It has been under construction for several weeks now and we just found out that it will be a second-hand luxury clothing store. It’s looking quite attractive and they are really putting a lot of effort into it.
I felt that this area was improving when I rented the location and since then there have been a few new stores open and some others remodeling, so it seems my hunch was correct. When the new MRT (subway) line goes in three years from now things should hopefully get even better.
Today I finally got a checking account for the business. Most of you reading this will wonder what the big deal about this is. In the US you can register a business and have a checking account open immediately after. Checking accounts in Taiwan are almost unheard of for individuals and hard to get for new businesses.
After first being turned down due to lack of credit history in Taiwan, my wife and I talked the bank into considering my US credit history and once they did they approved it. I got my check book today.