Sub Sandwich Tossing

Year: 1997
Place: St. Albert, Alberta
My age: 19

Despite being the greatest year in the history of rock, 1997 wasn't a happy time for me. For a variety of reasons (they aren't funny, so I won't go into them here), I was depressed, and I usually manifest sadness as anger.

Early 1997 saw me working at the prestigious Mr. Sub sandwich restaurant (Like Subway, only it has been around longer, and it's only in Canada). I was privileged to work the glamorous 6:00pm-2:00am shift (3:00am on Fridays and Saturdays). I could maintain pleasantness, or, at the very least, civility with most customers. There were those special customers, however, who corroded my thin veneer of patience in a matter of seconds. The later at night it got, the more special the customers got. They got drunker, too. Bars closed at 2:00, and we were the only restaurant in St. Albert open until 3:00. Guess where all the hungry drunks came.

One particularly pleasant night, the credit/debit machine wasn't working, which meant people couldn't pay with their ATM cards. In other words, about 50% of people couldn't pay. This alone made my shift awful. So many irritated customers. By the end of the night, I was ready to verbally castrate the first person who gave me an excuse.

About ten minutes before closing, a fine specimen of human being walked in with his buddies. I recognized the guy from my one year at Bellerose Composite High School, but he didn't seem to recognize me. He ordered a foot-long pizza sub, with extra sauce, and loaded with pickles and olives. In other words, he ordered a messy sub.

I forget how we came to be mad at each other, but I remember him goading me and making sure I made his sub just right, and I remember feeling an utter contempt for him that I have never felt towards another person.

As I finished his sandwich, I remembered that the debit machine wasn't working. Before cutting his sub in half and wrapping it, I asked how he was paying. He was paying with his ATM card. Knowing that it wouldn't work, I tried to run the payment through. I didn't want him to accuse me of lying, because, by this point, our mutual hatred for each other had taken physical form and was jumping excitedly on the counter firing two revolvers into the ceiling and yelling, "Yippee-kiya, motherf***kers!"

The payment, predictably, failed to go through, and I told him so. He would have to pay with cash. Since the mid-90s, people my age have very rarely carried cash. Dickface here had no way to pay for his sandwich. I refrained from smiling, but I was chuckling on the inside.

But Dickface was hungry from all that drinking he had done. He suggested that I just give him the sub. I wasn't in the business of giving away free food, so I turned down his suggestion. He and his friends hung around for five more minutes figuring that if they insulted me enough, I'd give them free food. Oddly enough, I tired of this behavior and said, "Look, I'm not giving you free food, so why don't you just get the hell out of here so I can close up and go home?"

Dickface replied with, "How about I wait outside and beat the shit out of you when you leave?"

This threw me into a bit of a rage. I dropped what I had been doing. The following is an exact quote of how I responded as I grabbed his sub in both hands: "You want your damn sub? Here's your damn f***ing sub!" I slammed the sub down--unwrapped--on the counter in front of him. A shower of pizza sauce, pickles, and olives spurted out of the sub and all over Dickface's expensive coat. "Now get the f*** out of my face!" The look on his face was priceless. Almost as priceless as the sauce-soaked pickle he picked off his jacket and threw at me, but missed.

"Well, cut it," one of his friends (obviously the brainy one) said as if I had just politely handed the sub over on a good china plate.

"F*** off," I replied.

"Well, then give us the knife and we'll cut it," Brainy offered helpfully. The knife in question had an eight-inch razor-sharp blade.

"Yeah, I'm giving you assholes a knife," I said. Luckily, Brainy was familiar with sarcasm. Dickface and company left.

They were even worse than the guy from Saskatchewan who told me that Alberta (especially the me part of Alberta) sucks because I wouldn't give him a free Mr. Sub hat.