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> What if instead of cream cheese it is a slice of lettuce, some cheese, and some mayo, for a veggie sandwich? I’ll go ahead and stop you here; no, what you ha

> What if instead of cream cheese it is a slice of lettuce, some cheese, and some mayo, for a veggie sandwich? I’ll go ahead and stop you here; no, what you have is not a sandwich. By which I guess I mean that it is not an unqualified sandwich in the same sense that an open-faced sandwich is not a sandwich. If I directly ordered either nobody would think me odd, or if the waiter asked me “is a veggie sandwich okay” I wouldn’t think him crazy. Oddly enough, a grilled cheese would be fine as an unqualified sandwich. I’ll turn this around and ask you to do the thought experiment. If you were the waiter at a lunch counter and someone ordered a sandwich and said they didn’t care what kind, would you give them a veggie sandwich, playing the odds? Would you as a customer feel okay getting that response? Or another similar thought experiment of your own devising where you would feel comfortable with that usage?

com2kid 8y ago
Plenty of places sell vegetarian sandwiches. 50 cents of thin sliced turkey does not a sandwich make. > Would you as a customer feel okay getting that response? I've had some great veggie sandwiches, the one I described above wasn't a great example, it was purposefully minimalist to prove a point. Shove some sliced grilled eggplant on there and it'd all be good. And how in the world are you OK with a grilled cheese being a sandwich but if someone pokes a hole in the bread and uses cream cheese it now is no longer a sandwich? Is a grilled cheese sandwich with a circular hole cut out of the center a sandwich? What if it isn't grilled? I'm trying to understand where is the line is here!
- andrewla 8y ago
  For what it's worth, my entire point is that there is no line. A line is completely unnecessary. Just like a native English speaker doesn't need to be told what the rule is for adjective ordering -- "the big red dog" sounds right, "the red big dog" sounds wrong. I've had perfectly fine veggie sandwiches, when I've ordered vegetarian sandwiches, but that wasn't my question -- would you, personally, consider that to be a reasonable response if you went into a random restaurant, or if you were asked to prepare a sandwich for a customer who said they didn't care what kind of sandwich? I'm not asking rhetorically -- I'm genuinely curious. People do differ on this; many people I talk to disagree on the bagel question, and consider both variants a sandwich or consider neither one a sandwich. My theory here is that I grew up eating bagels at home and not at restaurants, so would eat my bagels with cream cheese open faced, and not sandwiched between the two halves, so I never really created the association with being a sandwich; while people who consider it a sandwich grew up in cities where you got a bagel from a store or deli, where it is pretty much universally served with the two halves stacked, and thus is more sandwich-like during developmental years. Would you feel comfortable, without knowing the customer, giving them such a minimalist veggie sandwich and still expect that they would be satisfied that you've obeyed the broad parameters?

com2kid 8y ago

Plenty of places sell vegetarian sandwiches. 50 cents of thin sliced turkey does not a sandwich make. > Would you as a customer feel okay getting that response? I've had some great veggie sandwiches, the one I described above wasn't a great example, it was purposefully minimalist to prove a point. Shove some sliced grilled eggplant on there and it'd all be good. And how in the world are you OK with a grilled cheese being a sandwich but if someone pokes a hole in the bread and uses cream cheese it now is no longer a sandwich? Is a grilled cheese sandwich with a circular hole cut out of the center a sandwich? What if it isn't grilled? I'm trying to understand where is the line is here!

andrewla 8y ago
For what it's worth, my entire point is that there is no line. A line is completely unnecessary. Just like a native English speaker doesn't need to be told what the rule is for adjective ordering -- "the big red dog" sounds right, "the red big dog" sounds wrong. I've had perfectly fine veggie sandwiches, when I've ordered vegetarian sandwiches, but that wasn't my question -- would you, personally, consider that to be a reasonable response if you went into a random restaurant, or if you were asked to prepare a sandwich for a customer who said they didn't care what kind of sandwich? I'm not asking rhetorically -- I'm genuinely curious. People do differ on this; many people I talk to disagree on the bagel question, and consider both variants a sandwich or consider neither one a sandwich. My theory here is that I grew up eating bagels at home and not at restaurants, so would eat my bagels with cream cheese open faced, and not sandwiched between the two halves, so I never really created the association with being a sandwich; while people who consider it a sandwich grew up in cities where you got a bagel from a store or deli, where it is pretty much universally served with the two halves stacked, and thus is more sandwich-like during developmental years. Would you feel comfortable, without knowing the customer, giving them such a minimalist veggie sandwich and still expect that they would be satisfied that you've obeyed the broad parameters?