How to Be a Real Man: Eat at Panera

You don't need food that "tastes good" you weak idiot

Do you want to be a real man? Eat at Panera Bread. Do it. Why?

1. You don’t need a sandwich that is fresh. You’re a man. You need a sandwich that was made at the tail-end of the Kennedy administration. Flavor is “ham ghost.” As you’re eating it you wonder if the police know about this.

2. You don’t need food that “tastes good.” Get real. You need food that almost fills you up and costs $17.

3. You need a lemonade that could murder you (RIP charged lemonade).

4. Do you like soup that is normal? You won’t get that here. You’ll get soup that emerged playdoh-like from an aluminum tank and was molded by the hands of three different teenagers to fit into a bowl. Hospitaliano! (“take me to the hospital”)

5. You need a bathroom code that is hard to remember so you write it in your Notes app but then they change it every week and you have to keep asking for it. Oh, you want to go to the bathroom without having to break into it like a safe? Go somewhere else.

6. You need exotic iced teas that are a muddy brown-green-orange color. Teas that have names like Papaya Conduit and Bombay Boathouse and nobody knows how to order them.

7. You need a menu that is impossible to understand, with pick two and pick one options that lead nowhere and mean nothing. So you pick whatever you see first and the cashier says “Great choice Clover Piggins” (that’s what you will hear because you are insane now).

8. You need restaurant décor that has turned its back on the Lord. So what. You are a man. You love nondescript chairs from a rural midwestern factory bathed in perpetual moonlight.

9. You need overhead music that is way too loud. And you need this music to be from the genre “Keyboard.” You love Keyboard. Your favorite version of Keyboard is “Cincinnati Keyboard,” which is from Ohio.

10. You need a pager system that doesn’t work at all. It’s just buzzers exploding at random times, buzzers lost deep in alligator-skin purses, impossible to extricate, muffled lights flashing like buried UFOs, customers crying, mice scattering, falcons appearing from the East. It’s OK. When you hear a buzzing sound just go to the counter and take whatever food you see. You can do that. As a real man you can.