The Chronicles of a Sandwich Artist Episiode 1: The Sub-Job (1631 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 0.5 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Despiadado <bored.at.work.com> (View user info) at 2004-01-08 20:40:40 EST
Basic human hygene, self respect and any ambition to succeed in life. These are the hidden costs I paid for my 8.05 Australian Dollars per hour at your local weight loss propaganda source - Subway.
Mc·Job (m k-j b )
n. Slang
A job, usually in the retail or service sector, that is low paying, often temporary, and offers minimal or no benefits or opportunity for promotion.
[Mc(Donald's), trademark of a fast-food restaurant chain (from its mass-produced nature) + job1.]
The word Mcjob describes perfectly the world I was living in during my year at a franchised Subway fast food outlet in Brisbane, Australia. Well almost perfectly. If a job at McDonald's is a Mcjob, then a job at Subway must be a SubJob. And that, my friends, is exactly what I was working. Not a good job, not an average job, but a Subjob. Allow me to elaborate.
I applied for my subjob when the local subway was first opening. The shop would be ready to open in six weeks, and the management had to round up about 20 new dyslexic teens, who would work tirelessly, undergo untold rudness, and tolerate mass invasions of privacy for the promise of a few dollars deposited in their bank accounts on wednesdays. Apparently the task was more difficult than first expected...they selected the seventy of us to be interviewed out of five hundered applicants. When I was called up for my interview, I was instantly made aware of this fact, and how lucky I was to be getting this call. Being the young and naive twit that I was, I ate that up and scribbled down the place and time for my interview, and counted my lucky stars that I was one of the few chosen to meet with a real live Subway franchisee, to discuse a possible employment opportunity. My interview was a fucking rort. I arrived about 10 minutes early, and was told that due to fact that they underestimated the time it would take to read 10 questions of a sheet, my interview would be postponed by about an hour. Well me, being the infantile little youngster that I was, just took it, and sat, in a crappy little fast food resturant that I was later told was my new boss's first subway. The actual interview itself was not too hard at all, though I think some of the other chosen few were having trouble comprehending the highly metaphysical ramifications of such an intense routine of interrogation that entailed questions like "What do you think YOU can bring to this store?". This was my new bosses first line of elimination. It managed to root out some of the less sophisticated SubJob-Seekers. In a few days I recieved the call I though for sure would never come. I was now a proud member of the Subway team.
I was instructed to find my way to an office block somewhere in Brisbane's CBD. That in itself was a big ask for me. But I was so exited about this job (I'm easily exited) that I set aside my laziness and pulled out my steet directory. After some time I found the street I was looking for and got into the car with my dad. He dropped me to where I needed to go and went for a drive. I located Subway in the building's directory and took the lift to the top floor. There I found a small desk, a wall plastered with the words "eat fresh", "The way a sandwich should be" and various other slogans used by subway from time to time, and a door. Through the door, I found a presentation room were my future manager, area manager, supervisor, and franchisee were setting up a projector. I think the fact that it took four of subways best and brightest to set up a VCR connected to a rear projection TV should have scared me away right then and there. But alas, I was not thinking straight. I had been hypnotized by the idea of sitting in this conference room and having a real life, sit down business meeting. The manager was the first to notice me. She turned around and blurted out "Hey, you're early,". She came over to where I was standing and showed me where all of the uniforms were layed out, and told me what to take. I collected the shirt, then the apron, but then, when I came to the hat, there were to stacks. One of regular hats, and one of those cool visor things. I tried to take a visor but was stopped by the supervisor, a big fat, Italian man. "No," he said "the visors are only for girls,". I took my regular hat and sat down at one of the chairs that had been set out around the room facing the screen.
Now as more people began to fill the room, all of the guys followed almost exactly the same modus operandi that I did: walk in, get told to take a uniform, argue about not being able to have a visor. By the end of it, the manager was noticeably pissed off. Once everyone was seated, the franchisee took the front of the room and began a long and boring speach about what being a Subway employee entailed and about the history of Subway throughout America and the world. He then played for us a low budget video circa 1970 that explains to new sandwich artists what their duties will be, and what the company represents. I did however, pick up an interesting piece of movie and television trivia while the film was playing. Jason Mamoa from Baywatch Hawaii acts as the sandwich artist who tells of the complications that could result from not properly washing your hands. They then drew our attention to tax information forms, and showed up how to fill them out. This two page form took my coworkers several hours to complete. They ended the meeting by getting us to introduce ourselves to the group and complaining that no one had touched their pile of stale cookies (no not those delicious subway cookies, supermarket ones). The next stage I came across along this road to becoming a glorified hamburger flipper, was the "training". That's what they called it anyway. It was more like über's baptism by fire. They put two teens who have probably never even made themselves a sandwich at home in the front part of the store and stand out on the pavement telling passers by that there is free food within. They also invited all their friends, family, and acquaintances to this food give away. Sure, it's great if you're a passer by, or a friend of member of the managments families, but what if you're the poor bastard behind the sneeze shield taking sixty orders an hour and getting people come back and complain that their free food wasn't quite up to their expectations? You're fucked, that's what. My abnoxious supervisor was no help, he actually seemed to revel in the reactions he could cause by snorting at the pathetic sight of seeing hapless teens scambling to fill a ridiculous number of orders. When the time finally came for me to be rotated to make room for two more lambs to be lead to the slaughter, I was relieved to say the very least.
I had my first shift two weeks after the training. I was about an hour early (I had nothing better to do) and the first thing my supervisor said to me was, "What are you doing here? You're not starting work yet...just stay out the back." The bitterness that was apparent in this employee of three years was another sign warning of the depravity present in the subway franchise. During these first few weeks of the new store being open, we had three guys working together of a night to complete the tasks set out before 12 midnight. One of them was always the Supervisor. Since this guy will feature prominently in my story, he will be given a pseudonym. Let's call him Al. Now Al was not a small bloke. This guy was about 5"7' and a diet wouldn't have killed him. He is not the sort of person that's easy to get along with instantly. He is always right..no exceptions. He was too arrogant to concede a point, and too ignorant to see the logic in another persons arguments. But, with all his faults, this guy could make me laugh. He instituted an unspoken hierachy that he was able to enforce through his omnipresence during the night shifts. The guy at the bottom, let's call him Dave, was easily the most deserving of this position. He had achieved the position of sandwich artist through his family connections (the manager was his cousin) and abused his immunity from reprimand to the utmost extent. Al was pushing for Dave to get fired right from day one, and Al wasn't one to be argued with. Dave's apparent work-a-phobia was stunting the growth of the new business, and in the proccess, shitting the other members of staff to tears. However, whenever the manager, let's call her Angie, was in the store, Dave would always work to an almost acceptable level. Instead of resulting in Angie telling him to improve or be terminated, it resulted in comments like, "Ooohhhh, isn't my little cousin cute!" and other such sap. When Angie was presented with the blatant truth, that Dave is a Jackass, she would repond with, "Come on, he's trying."
Anyway, the trials and tribulations of subway work politics is a little off-topic, so we'll now move on to the tale of my first idiot customer. I was out the back of the store, doing nothing, as we often did, when the door buzzer went off, as it does. Al and his well trained side-kick who I was working with tonight immediatly shouted "SHOTGUN NOT". Apparently this indicated that they could not be bothered from their eating and newspapers to serve, so it was left up to me. I made my way out to the front where I began to set up the work bench as I greeted the customer. The customer was about thirtyish, with two adorable little brats. He stared at our various signs posted around about our different deal and such, and slowly deciphered some kind of sense from them, and formulated that into an order. I took the order and began making the sub, then as I cut open the bread, I asked If there would be other subs being ordered tonight for his kids. This was quite possibly the stupidest action I have ever undertook. He launched himself into a thirty minute speach about how his snotty little shits are allergic to everything from Acorns to Zylene as they ran about behind him attempting to destroy the postmix machine, the drink fridge, the straw dispencer and the potato chip rack. All I could do, being the polite numb nut that I am, was nod and smile and tell him that his sugestions that we do away with normal gluten conating bread and replace it with some freak-o bread would be brought up at the next staff meeting. This guy was the first paying asshole I ever had to serve, but he sure wasn't the last.
If you people enjoy this, I'll finish the rest of the chronicles and post them up for you.
If not, I'll go die or whatever.
User Reviews
Submitted by 10c7c (user info) at 2004-11-02 12:32:05 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Durae (user info) at 2004-07-27 03:22:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Is Bob your real name? That's funny in and of itself. Good post.
Submitted by DlESEL (user info) at 2004-03-29 06:05:14 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1080557554891617886
Submitted by Tony_Danza (user info) at 2004-03-29 05:51:54 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
GAY
Submitted by Despiadado (user info) at 2004-01-15 12:23:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I finish work at 2:30 most shifts. For those of you who aren't familiar with the fast food industry, that would be 2:30 am. I got home one day and decided to write this post because me bitch of a manager had given me a particularly bad time. By the time I was finished it was 5:00am or something so, yeah, the spelling got a little shit house.
Submitted by JinkyWilliams (user info) at 2004-01-15 12:19:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
A word on spelling:
This post was very good, spelling-wise. Not perfect, I'll admit, but at least used the correct term of "your" and "their" when the need arose.
The spelling mistakes here are genuine typos: You really do know how to spell the word correctly, and you generally do, but this time you transposed a letter, or typed one letter off.
These kind of mistakes are easy for me to let off the hook. Especially with a post the size of this.
However, when someone posts 2 sentances and has more errors than this one, that becomes inacceptable.
...Good post regardless of the minimal grammatical and spelling inaccuracies. I read it all the way through. I definitely don't think Despiadado should be pigeonholed just because he misspelled "excited". Sheesh. I'd wager that he has a better grasp on the English language than 85%-90% of the patrons of Ubersite.
Stay orange.
--JW
Submitted by reallybored (user info) at 2004-01-15 11:59:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Jared's my bitch!
Submitted by Lord_Of_The_Strings (user info) at 2004-01-09 04:57:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sweet, love the picture
Submitted by drwhoopee (user info) at 2004-01-09 02:13:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That's good reading. Keep it coming. +2 to you.
Submitted by Random Joe at 2004-01-09 00:09:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i love it
Submitted by Hairsphincter (user info) at 2004-01-08 23:09:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Does Jarred know about this?
Submitted by Deisangua (user info) at 2004-01-08 23:07:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Heh...
Submitted by Wheel <wheel.at.gbis.com> at 2004-01-08 22:54:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice story, more more more.
Submitted by ThatOneGirl (user info) at 2004-01-08 21:13:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Go for it! :o) Let's see some more!
+2 for the title of "sandwich artist"
Submitted by Trout (user info) at 2004-01-08 20:49:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I quite enjoyed this.
For the next episode use a spell-check.
You don't sound like the kind of idiot that should work in food retail but your spelling says otherwise.