If you love me, if you have a shred of loyalty to me, if you ever at any time – smiled upon me with favor and friendship. Then you will never eat a sandwich from Subway again. That’s right. I am calling for all my eager avid readers ( all three of you) to stage a worldwide boycott of the Subway Sandwich chain.
Why?
Because they wouldn’t hire me to be a sandwich maker. Indeed, they didn’t even have the decency to send me a kind rejection letter giving me a 101 reasons why they weren’t in the mood to employ sleepless bloggers and potplant killers in their franchise.
For the past two weeks I have been on a job-hunting roll. Not for writing or teaching jobs. No. I don’t want the tried and true, BORING jobs that Im actually qualified for. NO. I want to walk on the wild side and do something different. Part time. So, my newest obsession is trawling through the job search website and then applying for anything and everything that looks promising. (And that is within a ten mile radius of my house.) I have applied to : be a customer service rep at an insurance company, sell clothes at Shanton, pack bags at Foodtown, do assembly line things at a pharmaceutical plant, cut and pack bread at a bakery, deliver mail in my neighborhood, be a call center phone operator, AND make sandwiches at Subway.
I took particular care to tailor my resume to all their needs. I told Subway I’ve had tons of experience in the fine food industry working at Plantation House Café ( bossed around by the toughest boss in the universe. My mother.) I told them I know all about preparing food under pressure and with a smile seeing as how I cook for hordes of starving children everyday. ( And their father.) I keep a clean kitchen that sparkles with hygiene. I have a degree in English Literature and Womens Studies and surely that must count for something in some alternate universe somewhere? I can read and write orders really fast. I can even (if necessary) take orders in English AND Samoan. And maybe Spanish, thanks to Dora the Explorer. (Although I haven’t yet seen an episode where she asks someone if they want pickles with their chicken roll so I probably should have left that language out of the list.) Then to top it all off, I told them I love eating their sandwiches and especially their oatmeal raisin cookies. Which was the true-est part of my whole resume.
Subway acknowledged receipt of my application but that’s it. Zip. Nada. Nuffin. They didn’t want me. Rejection hurt. I battled with feelings of self-doubt and tried to ignore the flashing sign on my forehead that said: YOU’RE A LOSER.
I was whingeing about my plight to my Big Brother when he very kindly suggested that the reason why they didn’t want me was because “they only want skinny people working in their stores. You know, they don’t want people who look like they eat a lot. That might eat all their food.”
I was struck speechless. ( Very unusual.) And after a few braindead minutes I huffily replied, “But I didn’t even go in for an interview. How could they tell I wasn’t skinny from my application? Huh?!”
“Maybe they googled you.”
And I thought of FaceBook and I cringed. (Am I the only person who hates the fact that people can just put pictures of OTHER people up on the internet without even asking them, without even giving them an opportunity to get them photoshopped?)
And then I was REALLY depressed. Because not only can I NOT get a job at Subway…I also have to consider the possibility that it’s because Im too fat.
I crept away to mull it over. And then my Little Brother asked me why I was sulking. And when I told him tersely about my deadend application, he burst out laughing and dispelled any concerns I may have had that Subway doesn’t like me because Im too ‘luscious.’
“Dude, you cant get a job at Subway? You’re such a loser! Haha!”
Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Lessons I have learned from this experience:
1. Sometimes brothers can be really mean.
2. A degree in English Literature is really useless.
3. It’s totally possible that Subway could be discriminating against me. (It’s also possible that Elvis is still alive.)
And until number 3 has been proven otherwise, I will stand strong and not eat another Subway sandwich ever again! Calling all Sandwich-Haters to stand tall with me...
