But That’s Not How Sandwiches Work

So, I really love Facebook’s On This Day feature. Sure, sometimes I get a memory that makes me sad, or it’ll show me an update I wrote five years ago that positively makes me cringe now, but for the most part, I find it to be a fun and pleasant walk down memory lane. I revisit workouts I did with friends through check-ins where people tagged me, I get to see old pictures I’d forgotten about, and I’m reintroduced to nuggets of Internet gold that I found and shared once upon a time.
And generally, if I found it funny once, it still makes me laugh now. And that was definitely the case this morning, when I came across this Medium post titled, “Dear Guy Who Just Made My Burrito.” (The language is pretty NSFW, but if you’ve ever gotten a burrito like this, you will laugh and nod your head just like I did.)
This isn’t just funny because it’s true — it’s also funny because I have been battling (unbeknownst to them) with the fine people at Publix for years about how to make subs. Any of you who live near a Publix (our local supermarket here in Florida and the Southeast) will be familiar with the Pub Sub, I’m sure. They use great ingredients, there are loads of options, you can choose any cheese you want (!!!), and the price is reasonable. We all love Pub Subs, I know, I know.

But a few years ago, I got a sub and watched as the guy made it. He sliced the bread the way you’d hope — you know, most of the way across, with the top and bottom pretty evenly divided — put on a little mayo and spicy brown mustard and added cheese (chipotle gouda every time).
That’s when things got weird.
We can all agree that the point of a sandwich is to be able to fold the two slices of bread over the filling in such a way that you can get some of everything in each bite, right? So, it would stand to reason that you’d cover one slice (or, in the case of a sub roll, the bottom half) with your chosen ingredients in order to easily close the top half over it all and eat it like a human being with hands and a mouth.
So why on earth have they begun placing all the ingredients — including full, round, unbendy slides of cucumber and tomato — right along the crease of the sandwich? That’s the part that’s supposed to fold! You can’t fold it if you put your least bendy sandwich ingredients along it! That’s not how sandwiches work.
And yet, years later, that’s how my Pub Subs continue to be made unless I specifically ask the person behind the counter to do it differently … and I’m not really one to tell a person working with my food what to do. Hey, I saw Waiting … — I know what’s up. So, I take my weird, halfway open-faced sandwich home with me, lay it out on a plate, and either rearrange everything, or take a knife to cut the ingredients so that the sub will fold into a recognizable sandwich-like form.
Yes, I’m great at fighting battles, you can tell. You definitely want me on your team.
Do you have a food you love and keep ordering but have a real beef with? I also get agitated when I order a salad that’s overflowing in its dish to begin with, and then has lots of ingredients that require cutting. I end up losing half my veggies on the table! —Kristen