I'll never forget the day I walked into a Subway for a quick bite to eat and stood in line behind a young woman who asked for an unholy amount of mayonnaise on her sandwich. I happen to love mayo, actually. But this was obscene. The worker––ahem, sandwich artist––could barely close the damn thing. It sputtered mayo everywhere. It was everywhere. It was on the counter. It was smeared all over the wrapping. It was goopy and messy. It kind of made me sick to look at it, which is weird, because I'm a mayo fan. I suppose I just... didn't sign up for that. But who did? Therapy is expensive. Anyway, my point is that the structural integrity of a sandwich is important.
After Redditor LividTangent46 asked the online community, "People who work at a subway/sandwich place, what is the strangest order you've ever had from a customer?" the sandwich artists of the world came forward to tell their stories.
"This one guy..."
This one guy used to come into my sub shop at least twice a week. Always ordered a steak and cheese with extra, extra ketchup. Except you couldn't put enough ketchup on it. We could use over half a bottle and he would still come back and ask for the bottle because "packets took too much time."
"Then he gets to the register..."
My town had a lot of foreign exchange students from South Korea and they would always order the meatball subs with scoops of "seafood sensation" which was just mayo and imitation crab. Then have it toasted, it smelled horrible.
Also had a guy that could barely talk he was so high wanted every sauce on his chicken bacon ranch, it was more soup by the end. Then he gets to the register and he remembers he doesn't have any money and walks away. My manager actually asked anyone if they wanted it.
"First time he came in..."
Worked the night shift for Subway during college. Had a regular come in at 3am usually that would request that we toast the s*** out of his sandwich. I'm talking the whole thing was basically charcoal.
First time he came in while i was on shift, I pulled his sandwich out of the toaster and he told me to put it back in...and again... and again. I thought he was a drunk guy f***ing with me.
Apparently he really liked the taste of burnt everything. Grossed me out, but as long as he paid I didnt really care.
"I still remember..."
Don't work there any more, but the one order that sticks in my mind above everything else was one time a guy came in on the phone to order two sandwiches and he explained one was for his 7 months pregnant wife so to please make it right, he has a list of exactly what she wants. So I made it exactly how it was written down, then made his and he paid and all was good in the world.
Then maybe ten minutes later the phone rings and I answer it and there is this woman on the phone just screaming at me telling me I made her sandwich wrong and how she wanted ranch instead of mayo and blah blah and that she would send her husband in to get it remade, ya know full Karen minus the "let me speak to the manager" bit. So the guy comes back in and I immediately recognize him and he's apologizing profusely explaining that his wife is pregnant and hormones and whatnot, and I assured him I've been yelled at for less it's no big deal I'll remake it at no charge, he has the offending sandwich, I remake it right and throw the old one away, and as I'm ringing up the order(even though it was free it still had to be rung up at $0 for bread count accuracy) the phone rings.
So I hand the man his sandwich and answer the phone and there is this woman on the phone hysterically crying on the other end and so I ask if she's alright and she informs me that she called earlier and she felt horrible about yelling at me because she realized she wrote it down wrong and it wasn't my fault and the whole time I'm just awkwardly telling her that it's okay, no big deal we got it taken care of, you're okay don't worry about it, It's no big deal. And then she, still sobbing, asks me straight up "do you forgive me?" And I said "it's all good no worries" and she said "No. Do you forgive me?" And I said "yeah dont worry about it" and she asked again "but do you forgive me?" And I replied "yes, I forgive you. Have a great night ma'am." After which she hung up.
I still remember that even seven years later because it was the only time I've ever had a customer call back not only to apologize, but crying about it as well. Ironically for the question I don't actually remember what the specific sandwich was, I wanna say it was an oven roasted chicken breast but I truly am just taking a shot in the dark.
"We handed him..."
We had frozen egg disks that we were supposed to heat in the oven. I say egg, but really it was more of a frozen circle of egg whites with a yellow piece in the middle (that may or may not be missing depending on luck of the draw). This one guy would come in every shift I had and order just the egg circle, but didn't want us to heat it up. We handed him hard, frozen, disgusting looking, disks that sounded like rocks when banged against the counter, covered in ice flakes. He barely spoke English, so the first time he showed up we were very confused to say the least. But once we understood he was very happy with his egg hockey pucks.
"He would order often enough..."
I worked at a Subway a long time ago and a guy would order two full bags of lettuce on his sandwich every day. Imagine two pounds of lettuce on some bread. He would order often enough that I knew to go in the back and grab two full bags just for him.
"There was a couple that would come in..."
I worked at Subway many years ago. There was a couple that would come in semi-regularly and she wanted just a double helping of American cheese on white bread. No veggies, no condiments. Just cheese. I never charged her for the extra cheese since I figured the veggies she wasn't getting offset it. Eventually she started asking for more and more cheese until it was easily 10x what came on it. She must have been bummed when I quit. That cheese sandwich probably would have cost about $10 if someone who gave a s*** rang it up.
"I had to cut..."
I had to cut extra holes in Swiss cheese for an eight year old. Been the strangest request since we opened in 2007.
"I quit a short time after..."
I worked at a Subway for a couple months after high school. While working there I had a very polite customer, who was pregnant at the time, come in every other week or so and order the same footlong ham sandwich. What made this sandwich so strange was that she would ask for a tonne of black olives. Like MULTIPLE, whole handfuls of black olives. So much, that it was hard to close up and wrap the sandwich without some olives spilling out.
Some of my coworkers would only give her so much before they refused to add more. There were no rules, to my knowledge, stating a limit on the amount of black olives a customer could request, so I always obliged. Knowing this, she would refuse help from my coworkers and wait for me to make her footlong black olive sandwich. She would always comment that it was something she started ordering after becoming pregnant and it was the baby that wanted the olives.
Some time had passed where I didn't see her come in anymore. Until one day, I see her walk in with a stroller and her brand new baby daughter. She brought her in so I could meet the "olive baby". She thanked me for all the times I made her olive sandwich just the way she liked it and then proceeded to order a ham sandwich. Only this time, she asked for just a few olives.
I quit a short time after but I still think about that sandwich and the olive baby from time to time.
"Anywho..."
Worked at a small-town Subway for 5 years in High School and university. We had this guy come in that we called The Mountain. He was at least 300lbs and probably 6'5". He always came in wearing full fleece camo outfit.
Anywho, his order would always be the same, which is why I remember it so well. The guy would get a footlong with the BBQ rib patty (the most disgusting thing on the menu) AND the veggie patty (the second most disgusting thing on the menu). He would also get quadruple extra bacon (the same amount as a footlong BLT with double meat). IN ADDITION to all the meat, he would get regular amounts of every cheese. Just to recap, at this point he has enough meat for 4 footlongs, and enough cheese for 4. On one God-damn footlong.
Now, here's where it gets good. This dude wouldn't get any veggies. He would ask for just salt (not salt and pepper, just salt). And the cherry on top, he would say "Don't bother cutting it in half. Just gonna start at one end and stop at the other."
"Man orders a chicken teriyaki footlong..."
Man orders a chicken teriyaki footlong and asks if he can get a drink while I'm making it. I said sure (against company policy) and let him go fill up while I toast his sub. He gets every flavor of every soda we have at the dispenser (which isn't the craziest thing, but still weird). He comes back, gets his vegetables, and then comes the sauce. He asks for a line of EVERY sauce we have. He got the line of mayo, the lite mayo, the sweet onion, the ranch, the mustard, the honey mustard, the blueberry mustard, the caesar, the southwest chipotle, the oil and the vinegar. After I finish wrapping his sub, he tells me "Yeah I get this at every Subway" and he left a happy camper. This isn't the worst sub by a long shot, but the smell of every sauce mixed with hot meat was just too much.
"Fair enough."
We had this regular guy come in who would routinely order 3 footlongs with extra extra cheese, toasted and that was it. After the fourth or fifth time, I finally "asked" him what made this sub his favorite. He said they were for his younger daughters who would have "sleepovers" and they only liked Subways "grilled cheese." Fair enough. Cool guy.
"One dude just wanted..."
One dude just wanted two scoops of tuna on a piece of deli paper. He said he was allergic to gluten and didn't want a salad. I didn't wrap the tuna and rang him up. He paid, and walked out the door cradling two lonely scoops of tuna on a piece of paper. Weird.
"I deliver her sandwich..."
I worked at Jimmy John's and this security guard ordered a Tuna Club, extra mayo, extra hot peppers, extra oil and vinegar. No other modifications. She even put in a comment stating to "Please make sure to put extra of the things I want extra."
This was at like 8 PM so we were slow as hell. So I made her sandwich and made sure to make it right because I was also going to deliver this sandwich, and I did not want to go have to go back over someone else's mistake. I didn't even try to make it obnoxious or anything. There is a corporate-mandated amount when a customer orders extra of an ingredient and I followed this standard.
Mind you JJ's tuna has a very decent amount of Mayo in it already so the sandwich doesn't normally come with any Mayo except for what's already in the tuna. The tuna combined with extra Mayo and oil and vinegar almost instantly made this sandwich soggy as hell. And I had a bad feeling as I saw how soggy this thing got.
I deliver her sandwich and shortly after getting back to the store, she calls... Oh my gosh did I see this shit coming from a mile away. She complained that her sandwich is too soggy and it tastes like ocean. Yes, she said verbatim, "It tastes like ocean." It took a solid 5 minutes for her and us to figure out the reason her sandwich "tasted like ocean" was because of the cucumbers that she did not ask to be removed.
So I remake this damned thing sans cucumbers and with less Mayo and oil and vinegar. Take it to her, take the old sandwich back, get back to the store, now it's too dry. At this point she says she just wants a refund then slyly asks "Are you gonna take this sandwich back?"
I said "Yes." And I did go all the way back just to get the sandwich and throw in the garbage as I walk out of the building. I hope she saw that. No way in hell will I let her have the satisfaction of getting a free sandwich. If she had tipped me I would've just let her get her free sandwich but of course she didn't give me a freaking dime.
"Smelled like a can of sardines..."
Meatball and tuna. Smelled like a can of sardines and tomato sauce mixed together. Absolutely the worst sandwich I ever made or smelled.
"When I worked at Subway..."
When I worked at Subway a guy would come in and order a footlong tuna with seafood and crab then add meatballs, mayo, and mustard to them and had us microwave them and wrap then into 6 inch subs so he had food for the week. Grossest I encountered.
"It made the store smell..."
I've had this on three separate occasions from three separate people: The same order, oddly enough. Egg and tuna triple toasted. It made the store smell like 1000 types of hell.
I worked at Subway. My favorite was a customer who ordered a sub with EVERY SINGLE MEAT that wasn't pork. This included chicken strips, teriyaki chicken, steak, and everything else even if it technically was already there (like strips/teriyaki). It was a pain to get in the oven especially adding ALL the cheeses. This woman weighed no more than 110 lbs. She would eat that monster in her car!
If anyone is wondering, the damn thing came to around $25-27 depending on limited time meats. It took two people to close. It was just a foot long, too.
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