2026-06-20 SUBWAY

The speaker reminisces about working at Subway in 2000, sharing anecdotes about generous employees, college days, and quirky coworkers. They recall the joy of collecting stamps for free sandwiches, the disappointment of new management rules limiting black olives, and their eventual resignation due to changes in the beloved sandwich-making process. The story is a mix of nostalgia for the past, frustration with corporate decisions, and a humorous take on workplace dynamics, particularly their disdain for a manager named Stacy. Subway by Born to Ramble. I started working at Subway to do the signature cut and enjoy black olives, but as soon as I started, they changed the cut and rationed black olives to two per six inches. FTS. Tonight's short story, Subway. Yesterday I went to Subway and I know it's not fashionable to go to Subway and even less fashionable to love bologna, but let me remind you that it's actually turkey bologna on the cold cut combo and that is a lot healthier. Not since Louis Rich has there been another turkey bologna so wonderful and so low fat. Now if one of you happens to know something I don't and the bologna on the cold cut combo is actually full fat bologna, please keep it to yourself or I'll have to say goodbye to you at another guilty pleasure and I don't have many left to quit. Back to Subway. Whenever I go there I have a burning itch to tell the sandwich artist that I too worked at Subway and I want to ask if they're old enough to remember the old way they'd cut the bread. Do you remember this? When they'd carve out the top of the bread and pinch out that top part? Why did they stop doing that? Which brings me back to the year 2000 where I would like to begin this story. I was 19. Several times a week my boyfriend and I went to Subway for lunch. I loved it. There was a guy who worked there who we called the sandwich artist because he'd give me handfuls of black olives and he'd also give us streams of stamps. And this was when life was actually wonderful. So Subway gave out stamps so you could save up and redeem them for free sandwiches. I was on the six inch turkey on white at this time with lots of black olives. The sandwich artist's generosity must have caught up with him because one day he wasn't there anymore and there was a flyer that said hiring. I was not employed at the time. I'd been taking some college classes. I heard other people my age say they didn't work because they were in college. So this is why I went to college. I wasn't really going though. So I filled out the application and I was hired on the spot. During my training I could hardly wait to perform the signature Subway bread boat cut. The guy who trained me was very impressed. On my first day I walked into my new job wearing a visor. Barf! Just as a tall guy in a wool coat was practically dancing out the door yelling, I quit! I worked with two Debbies. One was old Debbie who didn't have any top teeth. She liked to stay at work later so she wouldn't have to do the dishes at home. Young Debbie was Deborah and she passed out one day after getting Norplant in her arm and shortly after that she quit. My new boss was named Stacy. She drove a turquoise Camaro and she was a royal nightmare. She constantly nagged me about my ridiculously long acrylic nails and I got them painted extra bright hot pink in spite of her. I also wrote on the employee announcement board, Stacy sucks and her car sucks. During my shift I normally ate at least a cup of black olives and I also ate a lot of pickles and I always brought food home with me and I always got high in the freezer. One day there was a big sign on the employee board announcing we'd have a mandatory meeting on Saturday morning at 9am. 9am! I was 20! Stacy was the devil! I showed up to this meeting and do you know what the topic was? The topic was we are going through too many black olives. Stacy lectured us for an hour about only putting two black olives per six inches. This olive issue was seemingly breaking the bank for Subway. After she'd had enough of hearing herself talk about the olive issue, she announced that we'd soon begin cutting the bread differently. No longer would we employ the signature riverbed of ingredients topped by a one inch strip of bread. Come Monday we were to cut the bread in half like every other lame sandwich shop. In my mind this was the beginning of the end for Subway. I didn't last much longer after that meeting. I couldn't adhere to the stringent black olive rations and the customers were just as upset about the new bread cutting as I was. On my last day I signed my name under my previous Stacy sucks vandalism and I added I ate all the olives. It was many years before I could stomach that yeasty smell again. The good news is that someone with a brain must have gotten the memo to the decision makers that people who ask for black olives aren't asking for a garnish. They want the goddamn black olives in piles. This is not an exciting story and this is not a story that teaches a lesson. This is a story about my love for black olives and also my disdain for Stacy and other middle management types who gain nothing in return for keeping the underlings down, down, down. Was Stacy's gross car paid for by the profits of Subway made from an overage of black olives? Were the sandwich artist, the guy who quit on my first day, Debra and me just collateral damage in Stacy's pursuit to conserve black olives? 25 years later is Stacy sitting in a luxurious house saying I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't saved all those black olives? I don't know the answer to these questions. What I do know is that Stacy will forever be, in my mind, a big dork.