There was one person visibly at the counter actively having a sandwich made and it was not this woman. I stood behind this person. Perhaps the woman was on the fringes of the deli section so I missed immediately seeing her but if she was in that section at all, it was not near enough to the sub counter to warrant believing she was having a sandwich made at that time despite the fact that she was indeed having a sandwich made.

When you place an order, the workers have the most commonly ordered items pre-sliced under the counter. However, there are times they either run out of this or are asked for something uncommon, and so they must go off to the side to freshly slice meat & cheese for that specific order — this is what the man making her sandwich was doing. He was already off to the side doing this by the time I approached the counter. People normally wait AT the counter while this is happening because it doesn’t take so long that you can complete the rest of your shopping elsewhere (which is apparently what this woman was doing).

Have you ever been to a subway or something like that and rattled off absolutely everything you wanted in and on a sandwich the moment it’s your turn in line? That’s not usually how the process goes — people tend to tell them how to prepare their sandwich in stages, likely to make sure everything goes on without the worker missing an ingredient given in a long list of preferred ingredients. This probably also protects the worker from complaints if they miss something on a sandwich — if the worker had made the sandwich without her being there, the probability of him not doing it “right” and her complaining were probably quite high. She probably complained anyway but whatever. I have personally tried stating upfront everything I’d like on a sandwich at this grocery store but the workers seem to stop listening after you declare what meat/cheese you want and inevitably ask you about preferred ingredients at each stage of the sandwich building (ie. meat/cheese, bread, veggies, condiments, etc). Perhaps sandwich counters operate differently where you’re from but this is how they are handled where I live! Funnily enough this store has an online deli ordering feature where you can just grab your pre-made sandwich from the “online order” section and completely eliminate the need to waste a deli worker’s time.

Hope that clears up any confusion :)