A human response with an actual apology, explanation and remedy? Good on them!

I'm just saying that maybe if you're the vice president of operations for a nationwide fast food restaurant, you could possibly, I don't know , say for example, maybe, possibly; and this is conjecture here: actually use proper grammar in your email to a consumer. I am not a grammarian or a stickler but it seems to me that a company V.P. would have the education and/or sense to write a letter that doesn't have to be deciphered by the all your bases are belong to us school of internet grammar. Two sentences in particular, stick out like a sore thumb. They are: I just spoke to the manager and supervisor in charge of this location and informed me they had a mechanical issue with the slicer. and , however I am be putting a couple of free meals in the mail as I am writing this email. Heh!

How does a slicer go from "slice" to "puree?"

The knob that controls the thichness of the slices gets stripped while being cleand and sticks at a setting that "shaves" the meat.

@gc3160 - that homo that u know: Stretching a bit thin to find something to complain about? Sheesh.

Personally, I would rather have grammar slightly off if it means a real human answered it. At least he didn't get some form letter with perfect grammar, instantly fired off from an auto emailer.

@gc3160 - that homo that u know:

HR requires that upper management consist of college graduates. There are, unfortunately, no required levels of intelligence or education. You can compare this to the current situation in IT, where individuals are often hired for their certifications - summarily hosing various bits of equipment that the 'uneducated' among us have to reconfigure at two in the morning.

----

With regard to the slicer, anyone who owns a meat slicer (You can buy one at Sears! Cut your own lunchmeat! Save $$$! Be like Kramer!) knows that they can screw up in a variety of interesting ways. Dull blades, chipped blades, wobbling blades, thrown bearings... each one does different things to your meat. The bearings are the most disturbing, though, since they get oil all over your food. Food-grade oil (depending on what brand of slicer you have), but it still looks disturbing.

Ideally, these stores should have multiple blades and multiple slicers on-hand. Unfortunately, professional (read: "The health department requires that we have Brand X") slicers can cost upwards of $2-3k, so most restaurants don't keep spare parts or units.

@gc3160 - that homo that u know: Sadly, I've noticed that particularly when replying by e-mail, people's spelling and grammar range from atrocious to mediocre. Most people treat e-mail as informal communications, whether it be your Aunt Phyllis or the Vice President of Operations at Arby's.

Don't sweat the grammar...at least Mark received a real letter from a real person and an apology. I'd say that's pretty good.

I hope the free meals in the mail still taste good when they get there!

Folks... I have long experience with the grammar of high-level academics and businessmen, as first a professional proofreader for academic journals, and then as an executive secretary who took dictation. (OK, I apparently know more obsolete skills than a Civil War reenactor. Moving along.)

In my experience, the idea that you can tell a person's socioeconomic status from their grammar applies only up to a certain point. After that, anything goes. For example, the professional grad student is likely to run grammatical circles around their professors. High-level academics don't often make the simplest mistakes, but they are notorious for a certain "we'll leave that to the people we pay to do it" mentality. High-level businessmen? Well, I worked for a top Houston real estate broker who I strongly suspected of being functionally illiterate, or at least dyslexic. He could evidently read, but I never saw him ever actually write anything but his signature and he did not so much as possess a computer. His case is kind of out there, but it's a known fact that executives hire secretaries to do the correspondence-polishing work for them. I was always given free rein to "translate" dictation into good grammar and diction.

So what you see here in the Arby's letter is probably a sincere effort directly from the e-pen of the executive in question. If he had wanted to bullshit the recipient, he could have had his secretary transcribe and send, or even write, the note for him. Beelzebub knows I've done a few in my time.

Since Arby's is selling roast beef Spam, what is your issue?

If a slicer is set too thin, many meats will "puree." They just don't have the... well... meat to hold together when that thin.

Let's call it what it realy is: long pork

It's good to see a situation taken seriously without having to say it.

It's great to see that at least Arbee's actually responds to complaints and is a chain that is still consumer minded (even if I agree the broken slicer is probably a lie).

And the link to soylent green rocked my morning.

Some stupid employee prob used a knife to clean the blade and screwed up the blade and it cuts meat like that now. Yes people are stupid and do this. to take the easy and lasy way out of cleaning a slicer people grab a knife turn on the slicer and scrape the knife along the spinning blade. its very dangerous to do this but this is what happens when stupid people are hired to work around slicers.

Not sure if anyone knew this or stated (haven't read the comments) but Arby's 'roast beef' comes in a bag in gel form and is heated up which turns it into a solid. They then cut it and serve it.

It's not roast beef...more like salt water with brown coloring.

I was at Arby's once and asked the server what part of the horse the Horsey Sauce came from.

I didn't get a satisfactory answer so I haven't returned.

"however I am be". Awesome grammar coming from the VP of operations.

I'm glad this got resolved. I have seen use of confetti meat at places like Subway though.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I think that the shredded beef option looks more appealing than the normal stuff. Maybe I'm just too much of a bbq fan, though, and that's tainting my opinion.

This is what the meat looks like when one of a few things happens -

-The 'roast' they're using was from the night before and wasn't properly wrapped and dried out in the warmer.

-It had been under the lamp too long and dried out

-Dull blade and super thin (but those are pretty good sized chunks in the picture)

-They got a bad roast from the supplier (doesn't happen often but it does)

So out of 4 possibilities the 'broken equipment' story is plausible but in this case unlikely. I'll go for number 2 because of the pieces of meat with the dark brown on them (burnt)

And while I don't want to admit it - Yes I worked at an Arby's long ago

I would guess Major Tom is on the right track - the blade was probably dulled for some reason and wouldn't cut the meat correctly, so instead of sliced meat, they were serving chopped.

I'm not sure why its such an issue (in principle, anyway, eating at Arby's is, IMHO, a mistake to begin with), as you have the choice between sliced and chopped brisket at BBQ restaurants.

@einstoch: @gc3160 - that homo that u know:

Honestly, complaining about the grammar in a quick email from an executive?? It's not a press release, and sure as hell was not meant to be distributed publicly. I had no problem reading exactly what he meant, even if the grammar was not perfect. Welcome to the corporate world, where you're often doing several things at once and can't always get exactly the right words in a less important email. If he had messed up some your/you're or their/there's, then maybe I'd be concerned. But clearly just messing a couple words (needed a 'they' and to delete the 'be'), now you're just grasping at straws to complain about it.

"I am be putting a couple of free meals in the mail "

Classic!

BTW, I'm not complaining about the grammar, I just find humor in it. Also, it is proof that this wasn't some sort of automated response, as I'm sure they would have double checked those before setting it up.

@Rando: Don't tell anyone, but I heard Taco Bell uses a lower grade meat than in dog food!

@Rando: Not so much.

[www.snopes.com]

@Rando: Urban legend alert. It is just like the urban legend about Taco Bell serving grade D beef.

Job well done by Arbys' management. Here here...

The response needed coupons for free stuff.

They can afford a couple free meals with all the people who, sadly, got hungry for Arby's after looking at the original post.

@majortom1029: The thought of that sends chills down my spine. I had a friend in high school (mid-80s) who nearly sliced off his thumb because the safety guard was removed from a slicer since it made the unit easier to keep clean.

I don't think I would have thought anything of this sandwich. Being a fan of BBQ, I would have figured that Arby's was just going with a different style.

I am be not a very picky eater.

@gc3160 - that homo that u know:

issue with the slicer. And , however I am

Well done. And rare.

The response, not the meat.

Seriously, I'm a total grammar and punctuation stickler in most cases, but in this case I think it just shows the guy was writing it personally and probably didn't take an extra minute to proofread. At my job, I get e-mails all day from superiors who are smart and competent and know worlds of stuff that I barely understand, but their actual writing in their e-mails is one step above lolcat-level. An e-mail like the one this guy sent where he just omitted or threw in an extra word or two would be outstanding.

I'd much rather have a personally written e-mail that directly addresses the problem and offers an apparently sincere apology than an impeccable form letter that says nothing.

@AlteredBeast: Classic what? Any idiot can tell he initially wrote "I will be putting...", decided to make it more immediate by writing "I am putting...", tried to delete the "...will be...", and the stupid word processor (I'm sure it was Word) didn't read his mouse swipe accurately. In his haste to get back to the consumer efficiently, he just missed the fact that the program didn't make the correction he asked it to. No ignorance necessary.

Descent response I guess. AT least its not a form letter with the usual "taking it seriously" phrase.

I have always liked arby's & its food. Never had much of a problem with them.

btw.... I LOVE playing around with my work's slicer. Just like on seinfeld... it is true it gets a bit fun slicing stuff. I especially love slicing hard salami as thin as possible! Makes a sammich taste much better IMO.

As for great grocery store bought deli meat....I gotta reccommend hillshire farms "deli select" ultra-thin deli meat (especially their mesquite turkey & pastrami) & Carando brand thin sliced hard salami. MMMMMM!

@forgottenpassword:
It seems the thinner meat is sliced, the better it tastes. It must be a textural thing.

Thanks a lot, now I'm hungry and its nowhere near lunchtime.

@Rando: Christ, it's amazing what people will believe. Salt gel cooked into a solid, becoming roast beef. That doesn't even make sense!

I work in an office and have never seen more horrible grammar than what I get from my co-workers. (There/their/they're - learn how to use them, please!) A recent email contained the gem "I have know doubt that..." Aside from that, it's great to see that the letter even explains how the issue was resolved. Go Arby's!

@apotheosis: Once you graduate from high school, it's perfectly acceptable to use the seven words listed as coordinating conjunctions so long as you use them adverbially.

@apotheosis, @jpx72x: (Not so phantom edit) Once you graduate from high school, it's perfectly acceptable to use the seven words listed as coordinating conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence so long as you use them adverbially.

I'd be happy with getting any response from Arby's!
I've emailed them several times as to why they still list this restaurant on their website:
Unit #00762, 847-967-1245
7001 W DEMPSTER AVE, NILES,IL 60714

They never respond.
It's been closed for two years & has on the sign "Closed For Remodeling"

Yeah, sure!

@jpx72x:
I'm fairly sure you need to capitalize the first letter at the beginning of a sentence, unless you're trent reznor.

Hence the boldface on the "A".

Also, your mom.

I worked at an Arby's for about five years back in the '80s. The description of Arby's roast beef in the snopes article contains a bit of spin. The Arby's website has this ingredients list:

"Trimmed Boneless Beef Chunks (Minimum 70%) Combined with Chopped Beef for a Maximum of 12% Fat. Contains up to 9.0% of a Self-Basting Solution of Water, Salt, Sodium Phosphate."

My recollection was that it was beef chunks held together with a stabilizer consisting of a thick, gelatinous mix of shredded beef. It's probably very similar to processed ham or turkey cold cuts. It arrived at the store raw and frozen in loaf-shaped 10 lb bags. After thawing, it'd be roasted for 4 hours in a convection oven, then allowed to rest for half an hour.

And yeah, you get shredded beef like in the photo if the slicer is set to slice too thin, or the blade's dull. It's not practical to sharpen the blade during business hours. The main beef slicer was in the sandwich assembly area, and beef was sliced to order. We had a second slicer in the back room for other meats; it could be used for beef in an emergency, but it would have been a pain.

Talk about inflation, worms are now $25+ per pound! Ray Kroc was be in the wrong business.

@speedwell: He might be referring to the 'putting meals in the mail' bit. I'd prefer coupons, personally. ;)

Good on Arby's! I'm not a huge fan of their food, but I'm glad to see they take customer service seriously. And, having worked in a deli with meat slicers, I do find their explanation plausible. Too thin or too dull of a blade will not cut deli meat properly.

@Indecent:

You're confused! Burger King is people!

@speedwell: I agree. Rather than ignorance, both major errors appear to be victims of incomplete editing.

Kind of like the kinds types of errors you'll sometimes find in my posts on certain forums where I can't don't let me edit after submitting. (^,^)

sorry guys, but I use to do all the slicing for the Jimmy Johns in my area that I worked at for 2 years. In that 2 years time, we never had a single issue with the slicer. All slicers have a built in sharpener. This was straight up scraps, and yes I also worked for an arbys for a year so I can tell you, for sure, it was scraps. This letter is just making up an excuse, and it IS a damn good one, because it's believable to those who've never worked around slicers.