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This post was going to be about the $5 footlong song, and how it's the best jingle to come along in years. That's still true. How many jingles get stuck in your head like this? Not since "maybe it's Maybelline." This shit's diabolically catchy. People sing it on the streets. This doesn't happen with other commercials. What is it about this one? I think it's the Flaming Lips-style harmonies. The easy-to-remember dance moves help, too.
But no, now this post is about how the $5 footlong is merely a pipe dream to trick innocents into emptying their wallet on some crazy-expensive non-$5 footlong. Yes, this happened to me today. At least in my head, I saw a commercial where Subway announced all of their footlongs were now $5. Apparently, this never actually took place.
I ordered a footlong, reasoning it was worth the extra 60 cents to upgrade from the $4.40 6-inch. The sandwich artist unsuccessfully tried to upsell me on double meat, which I found a mite greedy in light of my footlong purchase. Everything went smoothly until I went to pay and was rung up for $9 including my drink.
"Really?" I asked. "Nine dollars?"
"Ha ha, yes, that is not one of the five dollar sandwiches -- only the chicken breast," the clerk said, laughing (I'm not exaggerating here; she was really laughing).
Defeated, I handed her a 10 and silently cursed Subway's overly catchy jingle for tricking and robbing me.
Adding insult to injury, the clerk (or maybe the sandwich artist -- I'm not clear on who actually wraps the thing) failed to give me or my fellow Subway patron Justin a Scrabble game piece for the sandwich. Sadly, playing the Scrabble game was the only reason I wanted to go to Subway in the first place. I suppose this is what I get for transgressing the covenant of the sandwich gods by eating Subway in Deli Mecca.
Part One of a four part series of Subway-inspired short stories of 500 or fewer words.
Turkey Doesn't Live Here Anymore
There was a loud knock on the door, but when Salami Sam opened it, he only saw the empty woods. The turkey ghosts were at it again.
“Turkey doesn’t live here anymore!” Sam desperately yelled into the night. “Enough! Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Sam heard murmured gobbles, haunting the air. He thought he saw a flash of red turkey neck in his peripheral, but it was hard to know what was real any more. Sam thought back to the first time he saw the house. He wept with his head in his hands as the gobbling intensified.
“The House of Turkey, huh?” Salami Sam asked the realtor, laughing.
Having made his fortune in the deli trade, Sam was ready for a quieter life of perfecting recipes and curing Italian meats. The isolated cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota seemed the ideal spot to settle down.
“Yessir, this used to be the most popular turkey shop in the Dakotas,” the realtor said. “The fella here served up more smoked turkey, turkey sausage and turkey legs than anyone else in the history of the hills …”
“Huh. Well, I was wond—
“Funny thing — the guy who ran the place went by the name of turkey, too. Hence, The House of Turkey, you see?
“I see. And now it’s a house?”
“Mmm hmm. The owner disappeared one day, you see. All his turkey, too. His lease ran out, the other businesses went under, and now we have the isolated lodge before you for sale. So what do you say?”“That’s it. I’m getting the gun,” Sam thought.
He’d purchased a shotgun at the Rapid City Wal-Mart last week for just such an occasion. Sam hadn’t fired one before, but he figured it was simple enough.
“I want a gun,” Sam told the clerk.
“Uhh … what kind of gun?”
“The kind that kills turkeys.”
The clerk smiled. Sam did not.
Loading the shells according to the instructions, Sam walked out front. The gobbling had reached the volume of a tractor; the dark, flapping apparitions swirled and zipped through his limited nighttime vision. Sam aimed into the night and chambered the shells.
“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone!? I barely ever even eat turkey!” he yelled.
Sam pulled the trigger and … nothing. It seemed jammed. He tried again, and again, and still nothing happened. The gobbling got louder still and Sam could swear the turkeys were laughing.
Returning inside, Sam consulted the instructions and took apart the weapon. Sweating tiny rivers, he disassembled the shotgun to discover tightly packed feathers, crowding the firing mechanism to the point that it couldn’t fire.
A grapefruit-sized stone smashed his kitchen window and landed on his living room floor. Sam screamed.
Wrapped around the rock was a piece of trash fastened with some twine. Written inside, in the crude handwriting of a creature lacking opposable thumbs was one word: MOVE.
Illustration by Alex, age 25
Amid tales of murder and sandwich crime in their stores, Subway has launched a feel-good contest for U.S. grade schoolers. In the Every Sandwich Tells a Story Contest, Subway urges our nation's children to write a short story "that is as delicious to read as a Subway sandwich is to eat." Appropriately, the story must include not only a beginning, but a middle and end, too.
Due to the United States' inconvenient child labor laws, It's What's between doesn't have any K-6 staffers. Nonetheless, we are entering this contest. The winner gets $5,500 worth of prizes! For writing about sandwiches! So keep watching for our Subway Kids entries on the following themes: The Mysterious Meatball, Turkey Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Race to Red Onion Ranch, and Crunch, Crunch!
Let's go kids, it's time to get writing!
Exhibiting a heroically low standard for what constitutes an emergency, last week, a man named Reginald Peterson called 911 to complain about a poorly prepared Subway sandwich.
According to Reginald, he paid almost $12 for two sandwiches, which upon his inspection weren't what he'd asked for. Conflicting reports say his Spicy Italian might have been missing mustard and mayo, or perhaps some kind of sauce. Either way, the sandies weren't right, and Reginald went back to the counter to get them fixed. Here's where the mainstream media claims Reginald freaked out, forcing the employees to lock him out of the store for fear of their safety. Reginald says he just explained that he wanted his sauce or whatever, and that the sandwich artist refused, stole his sandwich and locked him outside. There may be some truth to both sides' stories, but so far, I'm with Reginald.
Once outside, Reginald called 911 to complain that his sandwiches weren't only made wrong, but, adding insult to injury, stolen. Calling 911 is basically the same as calling the cops, so he logically used 911 to report a Sandwich Crime.
When the police failed to appear instantly, Reginald followed up with a courtesy reminder call, reminding them that his sandwich was still locked within the store. For some reason, a lot of people seem stuck on this second call, saying it was a waste of time or resources or something, but I think it was perfectly justifiable. The operator gave Reginald no timeline for a response, and after sitting there getting angrier and hungrier, he understandably wanted some reassurance that help was in fact on the way.
I feel bad for Reginald. Yes, he disregarded traditional 911 protocol and yes, he got a little yelly with the Subway people, but he was tired (I presume), and he was hungry, and I know how that feels. That's no state to be in when someone botches and subsequently steals your sandwich. Therefore, I salute his initial 911 call, and because the responders didn't come diffuse the situation quickly enough, I salute Reginald's second 911 call. Sandwiches are serious business and if I were police chief, sandwich emergencies would become top priority. 911 is a joke.
PS: Note the tremendous sandy-cameo at 0:50 in the PE video.
PPS: The complete audio makes it sound like he called 911 three times, not two. Am I alone on this?
Before there was the sandwich blog, there was The Carolina — Denver's top sandwich.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Jabo, who fed the DTC masses from his barbecue cart. So delicious were his smoked meats that the crowds soon overwhelmed Jabo, and forced him into a strip mall on Arapahoe Road, by the motorcycle dealership. Jabo remains there today, serving up his varied meats along with such delicacies as honey-buttered scones (donuts), sweet potato fries and an unmatched variety of exotic sauces.
While I quickly acknowledged Jabo's place in the Denver BBQ scene, it took me a while to realize The Carolina's importance. I'd always considered coleslaw to be a side dish — never a topping. Jabo introduced me to slaw's potential and I've never looked back. Coupled with one of Jabo's signature sauces, such as the ever reliable hot mango, or hot mustard, The Carolina is unstoppable. It is THE five-sandy champion to which all sandies, Denver-based or not, aspire to. Bow before The Carolina.
I've always wanted to write about The Carolina, but it's a bit too much to capture in words. I've got a picture now, at least, so maybe I'll try again later.
Lettuce is without a doubt the most pointless vegetable on God's Green Earth, and yet it's omnipresent on sandwiches. Why? Who put the sandwich artists up to this? Does anyone actually like lettuce? No, it's there as a filler, and everyone knows it.
I'm not anti-lettuce in every context. In salad, it's perfectly fine, some might argue essential, even. A crisp, curled leaf of Iceberg is welcome on a cheeseburger — it serves as a refreshing contrast to the hot drippiness of the thing. But a pile of shredded lettuce thrown onto my egg salad hero? No, it's unwelcome, as it is on any cold deli sandwich. Regardless, lettuce is assumed to be part of any default sandy, along with tomatoes and mayo.
When I order my standard "whatever sandwich with tomatoes and mustard," half the delicatessens question me. "You want lettuce?" they ask. No. A thousand times no. They never ask why not, and sometimes they add it anyway, as a certain Greenpoint sandwich artist who shares my first name did tonight.
I fail to understand lettuce's role in modern sandwichdom, outside of being a cost-saving measure in its replacement of tastier, more expensive fillings. I suspect its ubiquity is due to foul play on the part of Big Lettuce — the leafy fat cats who once opposed César Chávez, a national hero.
Ladies and/or gentleman: do the right thing. The next time you get a sandwich, skip the lettuce. You'll save the sandwich artist time and you'll realize you don't even miss it. Explore other, better vegetables while you're at it, such as spinach or green peppers. In the words of the mortal but still historically important César Chávez: "The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people." Think about it.
