You’re right, of course; Subway tastes like resignation and apathy. But even the most mundane things can surprise you every once in a while.

Years ago, I walked into a random Subway, somewhere, and ordered some random sandwich. I asked for onions, olives, and yellow peppers on it. The energetic “sandwich artist” (their term, not mine) shook his head.

“No, no,” he said, with a friendly sincerity, “that’s not a good combination for this sandwich. You should go with olives, yes, but also the green peppers and spinach, with the sweet onion sauce. Much more balanced that way.”

I let him make it his way. I couldn’t even object, because I was struck speechless by this man, making probably minimum wage at the crappiest sandwich chain in America, caring so deeply about his work and my lunch. This man and his pride in his work, his determination to actually care, helped me see my own work in a new light, and honestly helped me climb out of the burnout I’d been suffering at the time.

Whatever you do, do it the best you can; thanks for the reminder, Subway dude.

This is a beautiful story. It reminds me of the stories collected in "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do" by Studs Terkel. The overall theme is how people find meaning in what they do and the nobility of the human spirit. Thank you for sharing it.

Thx. Another great book: How to Tell When You're Tired, by Reg Theriault

I worked at a Subway in high school, and the thing I liked most about that job is that there were two, at most three, people working, and if it wasn't standard 9-5 M-F hours, those people were all in high school. Being trusted not to completely screw up a business with no adult supervision was a very rewarding experience.

I think the resignation and apathy is just something that happens always with chain restaurants and scale. At a certain point consistency becomes the big priority and it becomes soulless as process dominates and it depressingly seems to work.

I think cost cutting becomes a bigger priority than expanding to new franchises (I guess expanding becomes harder to achieve after a certain point and cost cutting becomes a better way to improve financials). So they use lower and lower quality ingredients. Burger King is a prime example of this. Chick-fil-A is good counter example.

Great story!

I once drove 15 miles to a place because FM radio would blare about how great is the sandwich. In the shop an overgrown bored teenager prepared an unbalanced and totally disgusting sandwich for me. Needless to say it was disappointing experience as I could have walked down a block to Potbelly and gotten much much better sandwich without filling a fucking form on what meats and condiments I want in the sandwich.

I love Potbelly! I miss that place and Beck's Prime when I lived in Houston.

I recommend you all check the book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience". Probably mentioned already a ton of times before in HN, but it shows how to achieve the so called "Flow" state in any activity that you do, even in mundane jobs like a factory line guy working in quality assurance or something related (can't remember exactly), how he actually enjoyed that "crappy job" and how he excelled others in their same position.

Seems extremely rude to criticise someone’s preferences like that?

It is not rude if you smile and say it with respect.

> No, no, ... that’s not a good combination for this sandwich ... You should go with ...

Repeatedly telling a customer 'no'? Telling them their choice is not good? Telling them what they 'should' do instead? It's not even a suggestion, it's a demand!

Smiling while dictating your opinions at the customer and telling them how wrong they are doesn't make it not rude.

Super rude, for anyone, let alone to a customer.

One of my favorite parts of traveling in Italy was that the waiters who weren’t at all shy about telling you not to order what you were asking for, and instead go with something they thought was better. And it was invariably excellent. It’s much easier for them to shrug and let you make bad choices, so I’m very grateful when someone does that for me.

This customer was so positively affected by this customer service that it had a lasting impact on their life and they are even telling the story years later.

You vastly underestimate social skills and the value of authenticity.

What would be the point of reading into someone's quick retelling of an encounter on HN? You're acting like it's a transcript and lambasting a strawman.

It would be rude if they refused to make it if you still insisted. It’s polite of them to tell you before they make it that it’s a bad choice.

Every time a waiter tells me I'm making a mistake ordering "rare", it is rude and it does annoy me. I don't let it show, because bodily fluids, but the tip definitely suffers. It's really amazing how many waiters can't imagine eating steak that tastes good...

Seriously, how the fuck do you even tell that story without resolving the mystery of the quality of the revised sandwich?

  Subway tastes like 
  resignation and apathy.

One can only adjourn with the assumption that the alteration had zero effect or less, because it's unremarkable and forgotten, which would detract from the parable about burnout, because holy shit.

  mundane things can 
  surprise you

I guess that means hoagie chef's ardent recommendation. The story leaves us to imagine the chef (age, appearance, demeanor) on our own.

Fuck dumping your soul into human hamster wheels.

I left an HN-type site a few years ago because it was filling up with this kind of negative, destructive, cynical, all's-fucked-so-don't-bother comment that ever presumes the worst in everything.

Either try to make the world a better place (it is possible, small things are not wasted) or be quiet and stop infecting the rest of us with your apathy.

Edit: I really must stop being an obnoxious arse. Let me try again, then. Comments like that are damaging and self-reinforcing because they demoralise. A lot of people care and are decent but will not try to remain that way if comments like this corrode them - why should they, if decency is met with nastiness? Why even try? So please don't do this.

The original comment had a kind of upward twist at the end, due to the cognitive dissonance introduced by the poster’s use of the colloquial phrase “Thanks for the ___, Subway guy”. What read as a mostly older, serious comment was upturned on its head at the end by the change in tone.

I think the OP here was responding to the change in tone which signaled that such dry wit of response was “allowed” on such a post.

Had OPs comment not ended with some sort of puzzling naive phrasing and twist at the end, I doubt he would have felt comfortable with his dry cynical joke.

In some sense, he’s trying to cancel out the overly positive naive tone introduced by OP at the very end.

Equanimity and balance is not so bad. OPs weird ending belied a sort of youthful immaturity which struck counter to the wisened, aged tone with which he had cumulatively relayed with his story thus far.

You sound like you're on the autistic spectrum, struggling to understand basic human social interactions like some kind of hyper analytical artificial intelligence. The server was being helpful, not bossy. That was a great example of customer service going beyond reasonable expectations.

The OP could have said "no thanks" and continued with his original order. Simple as that. It seems that your social cognitive circuitry is overloaded by someone acting like an actual person instead of a simple robot.

Or you could learn to distinguish between jokes and non-jokes.

I thought this was funny, sorry all the soulless robots downvoted you. I'll join you down there soon

I would be annoyed actually. That’s the kind of overly bossy attitude that becomes annoying. I could foresee him doing that to you and every customer.

As much as people crap on Subway I don't think I've ever had a negative experience at one. I know they don't use fresh ingredients but I'm fine with that. They aren't that expensive and I enjoy the array of toppings they have, although I will always remain bitter that they took away that spicy pepper paste. If on any day I decide to go there, I'm not doing it to have a good time, I'm doing it get a quick bite to eat and fill up on. Although the fact that it's one of 2 close food places to me adds bias, I don't have to get on any main streets to access the plaza it's in.

> As much as people crap on Subway I don't think I've ever had a negative experience at one

Same here. I'm never going to come out of one thrilled, but they are consistently _fine_.

Yep. It's one of the few sandwich places I can go to - locally or while traveling - and be pretty sure I can get spinach and other toppings I want. I can see what things look like, so if the tomatoes are ... meh... I can ask for different ones before the damage is done, etc.

In my experience they are super location dependent. Some of them are pretty good, but there's a few in the less nice areas around me that are consistently grungy interiors with ingredients that are always on the edge of expiration.

I see lot of subway bashing all around. At one point in my life, I ate subway sandwiches for dinner, daily, for more than an year (can't remember exactly how long). The serving folks memorized how I wanted it and basically just asked "which one" I wanted (felt like hash lookup with the "alias" being the key and my custom requirements being the "value"). Never had any upset stomach etc so no complaints.

What other sandwich shops are you comparing to?

I think subway is a consistent experience, available nationwide and has a variety of raw vegetables not usually found in fast food.

I used to really love one particular Quiznos sub. It had this really great bbq sauce. I was happy to pay a premium for it. Then one day they changed the sauce. It was awful. I stopped going.

Moral of the story: When customers love your product, don’t change it or take it away.

They're alright for a quick salad if you have diet restrictions and you're busy. You can usually ask them to use spinach as the base instead of lettuce, which is much more nutritional.