Even if we limit this to specialty sandwiches marketed with a specific list of ingredients… due to the Build-Your-Own nature of Subway (reality, not marketing) more than 50% the customers (probably closer to 100% than 50%) are going to want to customize their sandwich, and after day 1 of the promotion the guy/gal behind the counter making minimum wage is going to totally forget what it’s “supposed” to come with. And they probably got grief from a customer on day 1 for making it with the advertised ingredients because many grown adults think they will burst into flames if they eat an onion.
Yeah, to the point where, while most people order “An X sandwich on a 6 inch/footlong X bread” at the start, you can totally just order “A six inch wheat with rotisserie chicken and pepperjack” or whatever and they’re not thrown at all. Because Subway is specifically angling itself as the ‘build-it-yourself’ sub place.
And that’s why I actually like Subway.
I can build a pretty healthy sandwich there, and it’s basically The Big Salad with toasted whole grain bread around it. And I’ve never gotten pushback for ordering “lots of spinach … no, that’s not too much. In fact, can you put another fistfull on?” Repeat for tomatoes and peppers… ooh, and olives… and banana peppers… oops, getting hungry, gotta go.
Every Subway I’ve been to treats black olives like they were the last drops of gasoline in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Sandwich artist puts four olive slices on sandwich, each 3" apart
“Could I get extra olives, please?”
Eyes roll, addition of two more olive slices
One of the fun things about working customer service is when they get mad at you for not doing the thing that they consider to be “common sense.”
It doesn’t matter that two different customers may have different and conflicting ideas as to what constitutes common sense.
That’s cute and all, but if you go in and ask for “a Whopper” they don’t ask what you want on it, they give you the default Whopper. If you want it different, that’s fine, but if you just as for “a Whopper” you don’t get just two buns and a slice of meat.
Go ahead and hate Subway that’s fine, but if you seriously can’t tell the difference between cold cuts, meatballs, chicken and tuna, well, the problem isn’t with Subway.
It’s not even close. Chipolte has like four ingredients. If you brought in this ad, and asked for that, they would certainly give it to you exactly like that.
That seems to be from the nutritional information section. They put together a sandwich with specific ingredients so that they can list its stats, not because there is a standard version. Note the “Calculate yours” button, so you can get nutrition info on the way you order it.
I worked at subway holy shit… 21, I think years ago. We had a guide for what went on each sandwich wrt meat. So like a footlong Melt had 4 slices turkey, 4 slices ham, 4 slices bacon and 4 slices cheese. Half that for a 6”. There were a few guidelines for veggies (like we were to seriously skimp on the olives and pickles… the guide made it clear they were for appearance only).
Absolutely. People did this all the time. When I worked there toasting the sandwich wasn’t a thing, but there were a couple of them—tuna melts, the aforementioned Subway Melt—that had to be heated so there was a small toaster oven for that. Despite the name plenty of people did not want their tuna melt with melted cheese. The first time that happened I asked the woman “so, a regular tuna with cheese, then?” “NO, I MEAN A TUNA MELT THAT’S NOT MELTED!!!” So customers often had strange and contradictory requests.
Pretty much. I know Subway has like 137 sauces now, but when I worked there there was only like 4—mayo, regular and Dijon mustard, and oil/vinegar iirc. Something like a BBQ chicken or the meatball marinara would have the sauce mixed into the meat.
Yep, same as above. The meats were standard (like on a BMT), everything was optional and had to be specifically ordered by the customer.
Yep, like the jerk who yelled at me for daring to melt the cheese on her tuna melt.
See above. At least way back when they did have build instructions, especially for the meat.
And I still don’t get that. Are black olives some high-priced commodity in the restraint biz? I love them and always make sure I have a few cans in the pantry. I can usually pick up a case of 12-11oz cans of pitted black olives at Costco for a couple bucks. If I buy them individually at the supermarket they’re at most 50 cents a can. When I go into Subway these days I order the meatball marinara and have them load it down with olives. I always have to say “a good couple of handfuls… really load it down” and then maybe they’ll actually add enough, which still isn’t much.
Not only are there far more than 4 ingredients in that very picture, if you asked to have it made that way, would you be offended that they ask about guacamole, because it is an extra charge, or would you be offended because they went ahead and charged you without asking?
That’s not the point. The point is, when you ask for a tuna salad sandwich at Subway, you don’t get a tuna salad sandwich - you get the same Subway sandwich but with tuna salad filling included.
Like if you went to a car dealer and asked to see a Corvette, and they brought you a minivan with Corvette seats and a Corvette steering wheel badge. And you think “hmmm, I’ll try something different” so you test drive their truck, and it’s a minivan with truck seats and a trailer hitch.
I’m not saying those vehicles are bad, I’m saying they’re the same vehicle with different trim options.
True, but to be fair, that’s true of pretty much any sub sandwich place, isn’t it? If I go to my local ma & pop and ask for a tuna salad sub, I get tuna salad on a sub roll, just like any other sandwich.
I wasn’t really thinking of the portioning standards as builds but yeah, I’d assume they would have reqs for how much of each meat would go on a given sandwich.
I am afraid some/many of you have blown a simple process way out of proportion. Yes, at Subway you need to make some simple decisions (for me it’s “everything except the pepperoncini, plus double giardiniera”) that you don’t have to make when buying pre-made gas station subs. No, it’s far from burdensome for anybody on the left end of the OCD spectrum. And ordering a tuna melt with cold tuna salad is easy, “Please toast the bread and the cheese before you add the tuna.” Couldn’t be easier and the sandwich artiste will have no problem.
If you have any Harris Teeters nearby, pay a visit to their deli. In addition to subs, some of their locations have great paninis for a good price.
It’s been about six years since I’ve been near a location that has the paninis and I sure miss them. About seven bucks each and so big that one sandwich is easily two meals, maybe four.
Wouldn’t OCD be demanding control over each ingredient rather than a flippant “Gimme a #9” and trusting the guy to just make you a sandwich?
Oh of curiosity, is giardiniera just a Chicago-area Subway thing? I mean, I know giardiniera, as we know it here in the Windy City and its environs, is fairly regional. I’m just curious as a Subway condiment it’s specific to the area and its tastes or if it goes beyond. (And if it is specific, are there other areas with specific condimentation.) To be honest, that’s the only thing that saves a Subway sub for me.
Soooo…your problem is that you don’t know how to Subway?
Except that your alternate-timeline version of a Chevrolet dealer is well-known for being a made-to-order car shop, and you just don’t know how to Chevy, just like you apparently don’t know how to Subway.
It’s neither rocket science nor brain surgery. Tell them what you want on your sandwich. That’s it. I’m not sure what part of it people aren’t getting.
It’s getting surreal how people try to insist that Subway does not sell specialty sandwiches when the promotions and details are everywhere, with cites provided here. That cite is from their menu section, not a nutritional section, and they helpfully let you calculate how your preferences might affect calories.
But okay, Subway is just a place with sandwich ingredients and nothing more. I bet the R & D and marketing folks at Subway would disagree.