Taking the Subway
[This is not a story about a train. This is a story about a sandwich.]
Once upon a time there lived a man who worked on the second floor of a three-story suburban office building. This building was nestled among other similar buildings into a grouping called an office park. The office park was up a cul-de-sac off a frontage road to a major interstate freeway. Everyone drove to and from the office park whenever they needed something, including lunch. On the frontage road there was the usual variety of brand-name eating establishments that specialized in cheap food prepared quickly. Sometimes the man would notice other office park workers driving their cars the quarter mile down the frontage road to pick up lunch at the drive-thru window of one or another fast food eatery, then bring it back for consumption in the office park. To the man this seemed an absolute disgrace, but that is another story.
One fine sunny autumn day the man decided to walk the quarter mile or so to the newest of these lunch-in-a-bag shops. The idea of being able to walk a short distance, pay a reasonable sum for a bit of lunch, and walk back in good time intrigued him. The man had not ventured into this particular shop before though he had long ago stopped in at other shops of its particular brand and come away somewhat satisfied. But on this particular day it became quite clear that things had changed.
The man ordered what, in the vernacular of the time, was known as a sub, sub being short for submarine sandwich. One guesses that it got its name from the elongated and slightly rounded shape of the bread which made it look a bit like a small submarine (if submarines were made from bread). The ordering of the sub was a complex process, for there seemed to be thousands of possible combinations of bread, cheese, meat, vegetables, and spreads to choose from. Being a vegetarian, the man tossed aside the meat variable immediately to focus on the other pieces of the puzzle. While waiting in line, the man felt like a foreigner as he carefully eavesdropped on the other customers’ orders. He recognized a coded language between customer and worker but was unable to decipher it. The man was at a disadvantage and required a good deal of help in making the appropriate choices. The cheese part was the easiest to decide as there were only three kinds. There were six choices of bread, over a dozen choices of vegetables, and three or four choices of spreads and oils. In the end, the man was unsure of what he had ordered. The total came to $3.05, a suspiciously low figure.
The man carried his lunch-in-a-bag through the parking lot and up the path to his office park, admiring the little white-tailed birds that flitted about near the construction site that used to be a small woods. As he walked, the man noticed that his lunch did not weigh heavily in his hand, another indication that lunch would not be overly filling (the first being the bill of sale). Back at his desk on the second floor of the three story office building in which he worked every day, Monday through Friday, he unwrapped his lunch. A look of disappointment formed on the man’s face. While his expectations had not been great, this sandwich filled him with surprise. The sandwich appeared, indeed, to be a little submarine made of bread, however, what exactly was inside it? To the man, it looked as though he had ordered a sandwich made of bread and shredded lettuce with a bit of tomato here and there for color. The man dug deeper hoping to uncover a secret cache of cheese. After much spilling of lettuce the cheese was found, however, the cache proved meager in proportion. It was, in fact, a smaller amount than a mouse might consider a fair snack. The man resolved to never again patronize this brand.
The man returned to his work fortified not by what he had eaten but by the disappointment of his experience. He had gained valuable knowledge and had confirmed his suspicion that the eating establishments within walking distance of his office on the second floor of a three story building situated in an office park off the frontage road of a major interstate freeway were all crap.
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