I've having a quick lunch at Subway yesterday and can't help but hear a lady in the line giving the help a hard time because of the tomatoes.
She said "You shouldn't have the end pieces of tomatoes in there, they should all be thrown out and only the centers used, with the green core cut out". When the employee didn't say anything, she re-doubled her attack with "Did you hear what I said? Those parts of the tomatoes shouldn't be in there!".
I thought to myself, "Lady, you're talking to the sandwich maker who is not about to start tossing out tomato pieces on your say-so. You either want to take it up with the owner of the franchise, Subway Corporate, or make your own lunch at home". And I seriously doubt that Subway is going to effectively dispose of 10 % of each tomato because you don't like the ends. Good luck with that.
I get that same thing often in the furniture business. Just last week a woman on the phone gave me the devil because she can't click on a photo on Taylor King's website and see a frame 'painted' with all the different fabric options and demanded to know why? She also said that Taylor King should have a database of where every frame is at every dealer so customers can go sit on the style number they like. After explaining to her that both those would be nice to have, but are very costly to implement, she didn't want to take that for an answer and kept pressing her argument, as if I could do something about it ! Finally I had to terminate the phone call with 'Sorry I can't help you, good luck in your search". Now i'll probably get dinged again on Yelp or Google Reviews....lol
That happens a lot. I get suggestions all the time on what my suppliers and transport companies being used should do. And the fact of the matter the ONLY thing I can control is things that occur in my store, everything else is something I have no influence with as to how other companies run their businesses. I get suggestions all the time to photograph everything in my store and keep it updated weekly, and also to scan and post the MSRP price lists for each of my suppliers. While it would be nice to do so, who has the time to do all that? It would be hundreds of hours of work to stay on top of it, and the profit margin isn't there to hire people to do that.
I've been trying for over 5 years to get my suppliers to have web access for dealers just so we can check cover stocks on-line to see if they are in-house, dropped or backordered. You would think that would be pretty simple since all suppliers have it in their customer service computers already, and we would just need an internet portal to their cover inventory....yet when i mention that to CEO's of these companies you'd think I'd asked them for something magical to occur. The dealers still have to pick up the phone and call to check on covers, and they aren't open weekends.
Moral of the story? Try not to sweat the tomatoes. Sometimes things just are the way they are.