Stalling for time

Panera Bread has been one of my regular coffee spots since I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon. I don’t actually eat there, beyond a bagel or the occasional bowl of oatmeal, but they provide an acceptable place to spend a couple of hours researching or writing.

Also, the people-watching is pretty good. And there are three that are geographically adequate jumping-off points for other activities in the day—Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

As a restaurant chain, you find the kind of standardized experience you’d expect—layout, décor, Stepford Wife interaction at the counter. (Why do they inevitably ask, “Do you have a Panera card with us?” when you’re holding it out to them?)

What’s interesting, if less attractive, is that they also seem to have no budget for maintaining their toilet facilities. (Well, the Women’s Rooms; I have no experience of the Men’s Rooms.)

Of the Sunnyvale two regular and one handicapped stalls, only one door actually can be secured with the latch. The others will only precariously hold until someone opens or closes one of the other ones, which sets the others swinging open. This is not at all restful. And it’s been that way for the three years I’ve been patronizing the place.

Curiously, the one closeable door’s bag hook has been in this condition for well over a year:

There’s never been any attempt to fix it, or to realign the doors. I wonder if no store employee ever uses the facilities to report this situation? Or perhaps if there have been reports, the parent company just declines to invest in repairs.

Over at Mountain View, now, which has been open for only a couple of years, the doors do indeed stay closed. But one of the stalls has looked like this for months:

Again, it’s as though management either doesn’t know or doesn’t care enough to make repairs.

(Actually, I noticed this week that the Sunnyvale store isn't even bothering to repair ripped booth seats.)

I wonder where all that maintenance money is going?