Tag: Subway

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 233

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I talked to a Subway manager while he was ringing me up. “You know that I’ve always got stories,” he says. And I do know this because he’s told me a few before. I ask him for another. He takes off his clear plastic gloves so he can dig in.

Last week there was this old guy. Old old, he came in with a cane. The guy orders a sandwich, some kind of turkey, and pays with a card at the counter. He leaves the same way he came in. He hobbles all the way to the door.

An hour later, the manager finds a wallet. It’s a long one, like a pocket-book. It was set by the register and forgotten, Fall leaves. There’s a couple customers so the manager asks each of them if it’s theirs. It isn’t. He opens it up. Right there in the plastic window is the old guy again, staring through his license photo. So the manager thinks ‘I’ve got to find him.’ he looks around the license, finds credit cards and prescriptions, no phone numbers. There’s $1200 cash. Not knowing what else to do, he calls 911.

It’s late in the day when the old guy returns. He comes in without his cane and rushes to the register. The manager has the wallet, offers to let him look through, make sure nothing’s gone, but the old guy tells him he trusts him, that only a good person would go so far as to call 911 to return it. And that’s heartwarming, but the story doesn’t end there.

The old guy sticks around. There’s customers, a long line around dinner, and the old guy hangs in a corner without ordering. The manager thinks this is strange. He asks across the counter if the guy needs anything, but the guy just shrugs. Later, when the crowds are gone, the old guy comes up to the counter crying.

“I’d been saving for two years,” he says. All that cash? It was put off to take his ailing wife to Florida. She’s sick, she wants to see it again, and he’s finally got the money to show her. The man’s a mess. He’s salt rain and thank yous. He leaves waving with both hands and the manager feels good.

A few weeks later, a gift shows up at the Subway. There’s a batch of baked cookies and a t-shirt waiting by the counter. The manager asks what it is and the employee says it’s from the old man’s family, that there were ten of them in earlier wanting to thank him. He’s touched. The cookies taste like cinnamon and burnt sugar. The shirt’s a Florida palm.

When I left the Subway this evening, after paying, and thanking my friend for his long story, I thought about what the moral should be, and I came up with this: the only real heroes are people who are willing to go just a little bit out of their way.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

Florence Nightingale

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 135

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I was talking to the manager of the subway about problem customers.

“There was this lady an hour ago,” he says. “She sees me making four subs. I am the only one working. When I am on the second sub, she asks me what’s taking so long.” The guy pauses like he’s told a story before. “I think she’s joking, of course. But she’s not joking. I see it in her face. She says very loudly I’m making her late.”

“And? Does she get a sub?”

“No, she leaves first.”

We move down the conveyor belt. My sub’s done toasting and I tell him to add all the veggies. This guy’s from Ethiopia, gave me the name of a good vegetarian restaurant I haven’t had the chance to try. What I’m saying is, we know each other, but we’re on a last-name basis.

At the sauce, he says: “The worst customer I ever had was two years ago. He was an old man. He was taking a long time. There were other customers. I asked him to move if he needed to decide, he wouldn’t move. Then he asks me if there is anyone else working and I tell him it is only me. And he says: “Well then I’m leaving because I don’t want my food being made by a foreigner.””

It’s the kind of moment you wish you had a stress ball to demolish but you don’t so you’re standing there, locking eyes with this guy, still smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling, like my muscles were in shock.

“That’s awful,” I told him. “And pretty damn un-American.”

But there’s a happy ending, or at least a silver lining: the customers in line behind the old man cussed him out. And the next day they brought the Subway manager home-baked cookies; and the day after that they brought him a giant cardboard card signed by a 150 people who work in the shopping center saying how happy they are he’s a part of the community.

“That card is still hanging in my home,” he said.

I paid for the sub and shook his hand. His fingers were strong enough to slice a hundred loaves of bread.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

Victor Hugo, The Memoirs of Victor Hugo

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 69

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee

I got dinner at a Subway run by an Ethiopian. He asked me if I was vegetarian.

“Yep,” I said.

He told me he’d tried going vegetarian but got tempted working at a deli. I told him that made sense.

We talked a little about home-cooking. He said it must be hard to not fix meat. “Where do you get your proteins?” He had his hands full with all my vegetables.

Halfway down the line, he tells me that vegetarians live longer. I think that’s a nice idea so I say it. I’ve felt better, physically, since I cut out meat. He asks if I’d considered going vegan and I say I’ve considered it but can’t pull the plug. Four obtuse triangles of pepper-jack cheese, toasted. He says I should try eating Ethiopian because it’s half meat, half vegetables, nothing else.

I left the place with a recommendation: Awaze, an Ethiopian place in Cary. I tell him I’ll try to check it out. And after the recommendation, I shook his hand, got his name. I’ll call him S, for short. S always works there. He might be the manager, or the franchisee. He’s got grey hair and square glasses. He wears steel rings. His hands don’t fit well in he small plastic gloves. He does the microwave first, then the cutter, then the toaster, then the veggies. It’s a quiet Subway, he keeps it that way. Whenever I’m there in a rainstorm, he seems at peace.

Currently Reading: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

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It is the stale breath of Death on his open and vulnerable neck that immortalizes the hero, that lends a fireside story its luster.

Nega Mezlekia, The God Who Begat a Jackal: A Novel

Coffee Log, Day 298

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Bolivian Medium-Dark, Trader Joe’s Brand

I was at this Subway for twenty minutes because it was a busy day and I needed to get back to the office. The lady at the Subway was someone I know and the guy at the Subway was someone I know. The guy’s a little odd and he knows I’ve been sick so he tells me ‘Get you some of that 100% Lysol from the Walgreens. Take some of that and it’ll clear you right out.’ I think he meant something other, but I figure Lysol would do a certain kind of trick in that it would cut out the sickness and probably everything else I’ve got going for me alongside.

The lady was easier. She just liked to talk about her Christmas plans.

You eat alone in a corner at 3:00pm while the kids come in and out from the High School. You’re not really alone because you never really are. Hard to know if that’s a good or bad thing.

Novel Count: 6,268

Currently Reading: Nothing! Done with Cherry, still deciding on the next book.

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Is made with only 3 simple ingredients, leaves no harsh chemical residue, and kills 99.9% of germs. *When used as directed

Splash for Lysol Daily Cleaner on lysol.com


Coffee Log, Day 280

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, single-serve packet; work coffee again; what can I say, it’s that kind of week.

Sometimes, life takes you to a Subway.

I imagine that one thing will survive the heat-death of the universe and that is the puffy, flaky, styrofoam rolls of ‘Italian’ bread they serve at the Subways. It’s marginally food. You eat it and are somehow left both full and hungry.

But that’s kind of the point: sometimes the only thing to do is start embalming yourself with cheap, sterile, questionable food. There are weeks where every time you stand, another thing knocks you down, so why not relent to it, give in, appreciate a numb, corporate fatigue deftly wrapped in bright colors?

I’d rather be drinking whiskey but even that is a little too lively for me now. Thank you, ma’am. Yes, I’ll take it with mustard.

Novel Count: 14,713 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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The father was long and thin, with a red face framed in white whiskers, and looking like a living sandwich, a piece of ham carved like a face between two wads of hair. – Guy de Maupassant

Coffee Log, Day 229

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Americano, Java Jive Cary; tasted like two dollars spent on losing lottery tickets.

It’s been a grey day and that’s a-okay with me. The sun came late this morning. It’s still stuck behind clouds.
#
I’ve been having elaborate dreams. Two of them, Sunday and last night:
1) She’s wearing dark makeup. I’m uncomfortable, she leads me by the hand. We’re in a giant walk-in shower. She undresses. She’s got black tattoos up and down her arms. I like them. I can’t stop touching them.

2) It’s winter. I’m wearing four coats, no shirt. I’m in a mall parking lot, standing by the car. You walk by with your parents. I follow, get their attention. You’re wearing my shirt. We hug. I ask for the shirt back. You look disgusted, say: “Don’t you have anything more important to think about?” You walk away. The wind blows like birthday candles. I’m very cold.

#

I bought lunch at a Subway from a woman with a cut on her hand. It was taped up but you could see the blood. I watched her work. She wore gloves. I kept looking at her finger. When she finished, I paid her and ate in the store. I had red onions on the sub. I took a few of them off. Red onions, white paper, cut blood glove.
#
I’m traveling tonight, one city over, leaving soon. Night’s been coming quicker and lasting longer. Bad traffic; congestion. I’m a dot on the ant-line interstate. What dreams will all this give me?

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” – Victor Hugo

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