I just came back from a
Subway sandwich shop. You know, one of those many places from which
Jared Fogle has claimed to have lost all that weight. I like the
Subway Club on
wheat bread and have ordered it many times. Each time I go I watch them make it. It's like a
ritual I guess. I haven't really thought about this before, but I like that. I like watching them make it, particularly if the person making it happens to appear competent enough to make a sandwich. I'm so lazy I pay other people to throw meat and veggies together and they even cut it in half for me.
I never really grew up.
So today I go into this place, and it's not the one I normally go to, but tonight it just happens to be less out of the way than my usual one. So I go up to the lady and she smiles behind the counter and I tell her I want a foot long Subway Club on wheat. She begins preparing it. She cuts the bread in half, folds it back the way I've seen countless times before, and then she reaches for the roast beef. She manages to finish placing four slices of roast beef on the bread, and begins moving on to the ham and turkey, when I notice something
sinister: there's green stuff on the roast beef. And it's not just a little bit mind you. It's bright green moldy crap and it's on the beef. The beef's also discolored in other ways. One of the slice's looked almost.. flesh colored. Y'know like, kinda
beige. Like at one time it wasn't completely
bovine.
And so I clear my throat as she asks me what veggies I want, "Excuse me. Why is there green shit on the beef?"
"What?" She looks down at the beef. She looks back up at me. Her face completely serious and nonchalant. "Green? Where?" As if either she's
blind or I'm suddenly
hallucinating and there's no green shit on the beef.
"There's green on the beef." I repeat myself, and the look on her face as she looks down a second time at the half made sandwich makes me question my own sanity
just for a second. Am I imagining this? Was there not green stuff on the beef? I look down at the sandwich as she does, and yes I confirm there's green shit on the roast beef. And I look in the bin where she got the beef, and sure enough, there's more green shit on that beef as well.
She looks back up at me. My eyes meet hers. The look on her face is that of a
defense attorney who knows her guy is
guilty but will be damned if she ever admits it to the
judge, "Oh.
The roast beef comes with green stuff on it," she says.
I shit you not. Let me repeat that last part because it's mildly important. She says, "The roast beef comes with green stuff on it."
This is not the first time I've walked into a Subway. Every time prior to this moment, I have entered a Subway, ordered a Subway Club, and the
roast beef is without
green until after I ask them to put
lettuce and
bell peppers there. There should be no green on my roast beef prior to the lettuce. Perhaps I'm being slightly
anal retentive about the
color scheme of my Subway sandwich's
innards, but for some reason, that may have something to do with health but certainly has something to do with
aesthetics, the roast beef should never, ever, EVER come, with green shit on it.
At this point I'm a little unsettled. This woman is telling me that Subway sandwiches come with green beef. This is the way it's always been.
What's wrong with you her dark brown eyes seem to be asking.
You wanted a Subway Club. It comes with green beef on it. I felt like I was being tested, or worse, on
Candid Camera. I try to formulate the words in my mouth and as they come there's a part of me that wants to laugh in her face because of the
absurdity of it all, but there's another part of me that doesn't want to laugh, because that part of me is very hungry, and probably would have eaten a green beef sandwich cuz dammit, it'd been a long day and I deserve a Subway Club, even if it turns out to be a little runny and starts to smell.
So she's looking at me, and I'm
flabbergasted, unable to believe that these words are coming out of my mouth. "Since when does the roast beef come with green shit on it?"
Her hand reaches over to the little bin where the beef is kept. She shows me by flipping through the slices of beef as if they were soggy playing cards, that all the slices of roast beef have bright green shit on them, and a few other gross colors that are most decidedly un-beef-like. She looks back up at me matter-of-factly, and repeats herself politely and patiently, as if she were a traffic policeman describing to me how to drive downtown to some building and pay for my speeding ticket or if I'd like I can mail it in and please sign here. She reiterates: "It comes this way."
I blink at her.
"It comes like this."
I blink at her again. Then I feel a
grinch-like smile evolve under my
moustache.
"Not today." I turned around and walked out. As I left there was a mother there with her young boy, and the young boy was looking at me with these big round eyes of astonished glee and reverence. His mother glared at me with her mouth
ajar and her eyes practically on fire. It hasn't occurred to me until now why that was the case: I had previously stated, "Why is there green shit on the beef?" Out loud. In a public place. With a child no more than seven years old within
earshot. Obviously the child had heard the word before because otherwise he wouldn't have reacted the way he did. He would have reacted as if I'd said "avacado" or "pumpernickel" and ignored it.
I said
shit when perhaps it might have been more appropriate to say
stuff. But it wasn't stuff. The roast beef had green shit on it.
I mean really! Green stuff you could
flick off or
pick at and
eat around it.
Green shit? You can't do anything but
walk away. There's a distinct difference. Besides, that kid needs to learn how to use words like "shit" appropriately. If she's not gonna teach him, then he's just gonna
learn it on the street. So considering it now, I think I did both of them a
public service.
I thought about writing Subway, but I really
don't care. I just won't go to that particular Subway ever again. That's just
gross.
DISCLAIMER: I wish to point out I've had scores of Subway Club sandwiches from Subway and never had any green beef before this. It's a great sandwich. Subway's a great restaurant. In hindsight I can't believe I never wrote a writeup about any of those times when I went to Subway and had a good experience, but that's cuz those times, absolutely nothing interesting happened. You expect to go to a Subway and walk out with a sandwich. You don't expect to go to a Subway and get grossed out with green shit. So if Jared Fogel ever reads this, don't sic Subway's lawyers at me. Subway's a great restaurant and I recommend it. They make the sandwich right there in front of you, so if there's green shit on the beef, you know about it. I can't say that about McDonalds - God knows what they put in that beef before they cook it to death.
monoceros says: Hi... your writeup on Subway was pretty cool, but weren't you curious enough to buy the sandwich and *then* try to find out what the green stuff was?
I knew if I bought it, I would have eaten it, cuz it'd be there and I'd be hungry and ..ugh. No.
LaggedyAnne says: um, there's a kind of fat that roast beef has sometimes that is almost reflective. oily. it looks green and pink and whatnot. it's -nasty-, though.
rootbeer277 says: I've seen that green stuff on roast beef, not just in subway but at grocery stores and stuff. I don't know what it is either, but it's harmless and flavorless.
Yeah? It's still effin' gross. Yuck.
Kit says: If it weren't so gross, I'd think it was funnier.