I Strongly Dislike Subway Sandwiches

For the life of me, I cannot understand why people like to eat at Subway. I get that it seems relatively cheap thanks to their $5 footlong sales campaign, but I seem to be constantly surrounded by people who actually LIKE eating there. Not for the savings, they think the sandwiches are tasty. I always say I don’t want to be another guy who blogs that “everything everywhere always fucking sucks”, but Subway really does suck.

Myth #1: Subway bread is great and freshly baked.

Reality: No! It tastes like crap! If you bought a loaf of Subway bread at a supermarket, or a deli, you would be angry at the lack of quality control! The bread, while freshly baked, is flimsy and insubstantial, and utterly devoid of any character or flavor. The “lengthened” bread tastes about as bad as the bread at Blimpie, only the constant marketing of “fresh baked” seems to have fooled people. You would think since they’re supposedly baking bread around the clock they could give you warm bread, but instead you just get this cold, sad pocket of garbage to hold the other garbage in the sandwich.

Myth #2: Subway meat and cheese is great.

Reality: Actually, I just made up this myth. Nobody believes the Subway filling is good, even Subway supporters. They use almost comically low-quality meats and cheeses. What’s sadder than seeing the Subway guy pick up your individual paper carton of pre-separated meat (because god forbid you get even one gram of extra meat), watching him peel off the separating piece of wax paper, and then dumping the contents of said paper carton onto your overly long bread? When you see how little meat there is relative to the bread, you start getting super-psyched-up for all the empty bites of bread, bell peppers and jalapenos you’re about to enjoy in only a matter of minutes. The only thing that might be sadder than the meat is the 3 small triangular pieces of cheese that may not have been acceptable at your second-grade cafeteria, depending on how nice of a school you went to.

Myth #3: Subway is great because you can get unlimited vegetable toppings.

Reality: Hey here’s a genius idea I just thought of: BUY A SALAD! How about that?!? In no other circumstance would you eat a sandwich that was 85% comprised of shredded lettuce from a bag, sliced olives, bell peppers, mushy tomatoes, jalapenos, banana peppers and onions. And yet somehow people who go to Subway think this is a good idea, even though (1) they never eat sandwiches like that anywhere else and (2) they would never make that sort of sandwich for themselves. If you mixed the Subway vegetables into a salad, everyone would say, “whoa, that’s a disgusting salad”. But dump it all in a foot of bread, and suddenly this is a great idea.

Myth #4: Sure Subway doesn’t taste all that good, but it’s so cheap!

Reality: Yes, you can get moderately full at Subway for $5 before tax. But you could get VERY full eating seven Cup of Noodles for even less money. It’s all about what you get for the $5, not the fact that it’s $5. And what you’re getting is garbage. People seem to be under the impression, “what a great deal! A FOOTLONG sandwich for $5!” But the amount of meat and cheese (setting aside the quality for a second) you get in a footlong sandwich is only as much as any deli would serve in a sandwich half as big. The trick Subway has mastered is baking this long, thin bread (almost like they took regular, acceptable bread, and then just stretched it from both ends, making the inside of the bread more hollow) and sort of playing with geometry to make it look like you’re not getting screwed on meat and cheese. It’s no accident Quizno’s unveiled their “Torpedo” sandwiches, which are even thinner – they saw what Subway was succeeding with, and took it one step further. Apparently a lot of people don’t mind eating a crappy sandwich, provided it’s a really long sandwich! (Feel free to insert your own highly appropriate follow-up joke here).

Myth #5: Subway is great because it’s nutritious!

Reality: I suppose many of the sandwiches are less unhealthy than other fast food options, but if this is a big priority, the answer is not to eat at Subway, it’s just to eat less fast food. Quizno’s first big wave of expansion occurred when I was in middle school. (Sidebar, my school was called an “intermediate school”, and I used this term for years on the east coast before finally giving up because people thought maybe I went to a remedial school for low-IQ children. I always thought my school was called an intermediate school because the other middle school in the district started with a “P”, and conceivably could have been abbreviated “PMS”, which was apparently not acceptable.) In middle school, after eating Quizno’s for the first time, I thought “oh man, Subway is SCREWED.” I don’t think Quizno’s is great or anything, but the comparison to Subway is a complete joke. Yet as the years have gone by, people continue to prefer Subway’s untoasted, flimsy, meatless “weight-loss” concoction, and I just can’t understand.

Anyways, don’t ask me to go to Subway with you. I guess that’s the only conclusion here.