A Subway Tale I’ve done this a thousand times. Ten thousand times. I could do this in my sleep. “Hello, Miss, what can I get for you today?” My voice has a high inflection. There is no sign of aggression or an attempt to dominate the transaction. I am simply the customer’s servant. Their wishes are to be my own, and I am to craft with pride. I can tell by the customer’s appearance the likelihood of their order. The woman is a young white girl, probably mid twenties, by herself. Women like this typically have a single order, unlike the middle-aged mothers who may buy 3 sandwiches in order to feed herself and her children. She seems to be in good health, increasing the likelihood of her ordering a wrap or a salad. After all, these buns are more cake than bread. Even if that is true, 80% of all orders are already sandwiches, and it is still the safest bet to think about the sandwich type-meaning, she’ll probably purchase either a 6-inch or a footlong with a light deli meat, such as turkey or ham. “I would like a tuna sandwich.” Damn, always get blindsided by that option. After a momentary pause, I extend the very well rehearsed: “And on what kind of bread?” “Oh… how about Italian Herbs and Cheese?” “Good choice, we just baked those. And will that be on a 6-inch or a footlong?” “Hm… a 6-inch.” She says it with a light frown. I’ve seen this before. I turn towards the bread cabinet, each step calculated and familiar with the proper distance, not a single action wasted, no awkward movements visible to any angle. As expected, I hear her correct her order. “I’m so sorry, can I actually make that a footlong?” “Of course! No problem.” I’m not entirely sure the reason why, but young women seem to want to order less than they are really hungry for. My gut instinct tells me it has to do with social expectations. I pull out the footlong, set it on the deli paper and make a perfect incision, artfully showing my technique and finesse, and finally spreading it open to satisfy the customer’s insecurity that their sandwich is in good hands. Standard procedure is to ask all customers if they would like extra meat for an additional fee, but given the customer’s trepidation over the size of their sandwich I didn’t want to give her any more reason to regret her decision. “And what kind of cheese would you like” I make sure to speak in full sentences in order to increase the perception the customer has of me that I care about her, as opposed to the popular: “And the cheese?” “Ooo… how about Swiss?” “Alright, and would you like that toasted?” Again, a necessary question that I am obligated to ask. In my experience, however, toasted tuna is actually seen as an inferior version of the stuff, and looked down upon by Subway tuna sandwich-eating connoisseurs. I yearn for the sake of the customer that she says “No, thank you”. “You know what, could you toast the bread by itself and then add the tuna?” “Oh yes of course!” I had already added the prescribed 4 scoops of Tuna so I returned them to their home on the line. Now that I had already been given an inconvenience, I no longer had any qualms about the efficiency of the project. “Would you like me to remove some of the bread as well?” It may be a slightly less known fact to the general Subway consumer but it is actually recommended that the bread be removed from the sandwich when a customer is getting tuna, as it improves the final aesthetic of the product in addition to the reality of the nutritional nature of the unhealthy bread. “Oh, no thank you!” An expected response in hindsight. The customers who would be inclined to order such a thing almost always give me a warning prior to the toasting of the sandwich. “And is it okay if I add the cheese before it gets toasted?” “Yes, please.” I try to curtail my seeping fear that I’m asking too many questions to a young woman that is so polite to me. But I am quick to extinguish this sort of nonsense. I have cheese to add. I take the 4 slices of Swiss cheese, larger in surface area than all other kinds we have, and place them point-side up then point-side down, adjacent to the next, in a manner that eventually illustrates a parallelogram, the most efficient spread of cheese over the sandwich. Frankly I have no idea if the customer cares about this or not, but the magic is revealed upon the finality of the toasting, where the melted cheese will entirely cover the top of the bread. During the toasting, which is only 18 seconds due to the nature of the meat-tuna, as opposed to something like chicken which would be toasted up to 35 seconds, I have a moment to view my surroundings. The Subway Championships Here I am, at the center of a crowded stadium. The judges are near the bottom of the bleachers, watching all contestants perform. Watching me. I have a moment of self-awareness, and at once feel the looming sensation of insecurity. I take a deep breath. This is what I live for. This is what I was born to do. I am in my element, and there isn’t a single goddamn person that can make a better sandwich than I. I am not the only person on stage. There are, in fact, 4 stations, and in each of which a contestant. There are also 4 rotations, for a total of 16 contestants. I am in the second rotation. In this tournament each sandwich artist is tasked with a variety of situations, from basic sandwich making to how quickly a long line of orders can be handled. I may be the youngest, I may be the rookie, but damn it if I haven’t worked for this. The winner gets 20,000 and the chance to own their own Subway. It is a ticket out of poverty for a young person such as myself, or an education for some of the older contestants. I am in the 2nd station, and I glance over at the artist on my right. He is Rodrigo, a 30 year old man who has worked at Subway for 6 years. He is the pride of his hometown in Texas. He put his home on the map. I notice he is making a Spicy Italian for a man who seems to be in his early twenties. The customers who are ordering from us today are the same people who purchased tickets to the show, and there is an eating area backstage for all the people fortunate enough to make it up here. Then I realize that my stagemate is no joke. Tsk. That motherfucker is really folding all 20 of his salami and pepperoni?! His sandwich is seemingly immaculate. The 10 pepperoni perfectly wrapped and folded over the salami with a parallelogram of Pepperjack cheese melted over all of it. I could smell it from where I was, and it was mouthwatering. But he isn’t out of deep water yet, I could tell. Vegetables tell a lot about a man. It is in this moment that the beeping of the toaster reminds me of my purpose, which I instantly open and in one swift motion upheave the toaster basket nestling the hot sandwich and rest it to the side where I finish adding the tuna. I note that the melted cheese looks delicious before I finally bring the sandwich to the second and final portion of the sandwich making process. “And what vegetables would you like?” The vegetables are easy to categorize with practice. There are 10 complimentary vegetables, 6 of which, on one side, have a short shelf-life. These are the iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, green bell peppers, cucumbers, and red onions. Then, on the other side, are those vegetables with long shelf lives: pickles, olives, banana peppers (Pepperchinis/Wax peppers), and jalapeños. These are much harder for me to read within people, and sometimes I feel like there is no correlation at all between appearance and vegetable preference. “I would like…” My hands follow her focus as I become positive she’s going to say lettuce. “Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and spinach.” I’m in luck. Oftentimes customers say their vegetables one at a time, waiting for me to accomplish one before mentioning the next, costing precious seconds in planning and execution. I know how much lettuce should be in my fist for it to be the perfect amount. The weight has been trained into me. I select 5 tomatoes close in size and texture and spread them evenly about the vegetable side of the sandwich. I know that cucumbers are ideally the final vegetable added on the sandwich given my experience, as they are the hardest in terms of density and can be used to compress the vegetables beneath them in the case that the sandwich is dense with food and would otherwise be difficult to close, and so the third vegetable I add is the spinach, which is really quite a tricky one to add. It is the hardest vegetable to add to the sandwich to make seem aesthetically pleasing given its leafy and inconsistent nature. You cannot simply reach into the spinach container and pull out nice flattened spinach leaves. You have to individually, in some sense, lay them upon the sandwich, which is why impatience will bite you in this regard. I pray that my pinch is good, and I end up with about 9 leaves of spinach, nearly ideal. After I nearly lay them spaced out I add 6 medium-sized cucumbers to finalize the vegetables. “And would you like any condiments? Mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, oil, vinegar?” “All except the mustard, thank you.” I could tell the customer seemed to appreciate the fact that I knew she would want those, which seem to be the universally most popular additives. She is no newbie to Subway. I, having down the sequence so many times, make it look easy, each condiment following the next in under 3 seconds. “Will that be all for you?” I know the answer. “Yes.” Under normal circumstances we would have to ring up the customers ourselves but we actually have an area backstage for that so that we can focus on the sandwiches and the tasks at hand. I bisect her sandwich and then quickly place and wrap it, giving it to her with a smile and “Have a wonderful day.” I was the 2nd person to finish their sandwich. Soon the judges will call us all to the front and give us criticism and scores. I hope you enjoyed my fun meaningless make believe story and if you really like it I might make a chapter 2.
