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Bit of background on me: I've worked in the food service industry since 1997. In that time I've worked as a waiter at a retirement home, a TCBY employee, a Domino's delivery driver/assistant manager/general manager/three-store supervisor, a "good-will ambassador" and ID-checker at a strip club, a driver/assistant manager for Papa Johns, a Subway sandwich "artist", and I'm currently working my way up through the ranks of Little Caesar's.
During the course of my 13 years of employment, I have learned something that I would like to pass along to the rest of you, something quite important when you next seek out gainful employment.
For te love of God and all things holy, do yourself a favor and avoid working for a Subway restaurant. Seriously. I'm begging you here, if you accidently put in an application for a Subway and they happen to call you back for an interview, fake cancer or dismemberment. Why, you ask? Well, then Reader, apparently you have never worked for one of these places before. Allow me to enlighten you.
1: I've worked for 6 different Subways under 3 different owners (strangely they were transfers at the new owners' requests due to hours I picked up at their stores). In every situation, the owners did not pay overtime. At all. Two of them would at least make an attempt to keep employees' hours under 40; the third would just dock your pay an hour for every hour over 40 that you made. Yeah, it's illegal, but he always got away with it because he had good lawyers, so I heard.
2: The customers. My God in heaven, the customers. The most petty, clueless, mean-spirited folks I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with... and that includes my work checking IDs and explaining rules to drunken college kids at a strip club.
3: Customer story 1. I lived in Florida at the time and my area had just been struck by 4 major hurricanes in a 2 month period. The last hurricane to hit was Wilma, which those of you who lived in the Palm Beach County area will remember with a shudder, I assume.
I was working 12-hour shifts 8:00am to 8:30pm--the curfew for the post-hurricane Mad Max-like Palm Beach County was 8:30pm, so technically by leaving at 8:30pm we were breaking the law... which is why it pays to give free stuff to cops. More on that later...
Anywho, since we're the only joint open in Boca Raton apparently, and since this was in the pre-five-dollar-footlong days, we had an after-5pm special, which was buy-one-get-one. Since, again, we were the only place open, we went around to every Subway in the area and bought up the inventories; we wouldn't be getting a food delivery for "the duration of the emergency." I suggested to the owner that we not honor the after-5pm special, that way we wouldn't run out of food so quickly. He agreed, and we posted signs everywhere. Literally everywhere: On the door, the window; the glass near the bread section, meat section, veggie section; the registers and coke coolers, too. The lines stretched around the shopping center and we were doing at least 100 footlongs an hour. Guess how many people after five would come in and order 2 footlongs, hear me say "just so you know, we're not offering the BOGO during the duration of the emergency, will that be OK?" yet expect the BOGO anyway?
Yeah, quite a few. A lot of threats about calling the better business bureau and reporting us for price gouging came and went, but obviously NOT honoring a specific discount for a period is quite different from raising existing prices. But I digress.
I decided to put in my two weeks after that week, mainly because my "excuse" of wanting to cut up a 60-foot pine that fell in my yard partially destroying my roof was not good enough to avoid the 12 hour shifts every day that week. Boy oh boy, you'd think that I asked for a pound of flesh! My resignation was not accepted and would not be accepted.
In a way I was kind of pleased. Apparently I was such a good worker that this guy didn't want to lose me. On the other hand, I had been offered a position at another place which paid $2 more an hour. So I was in a quandry. I wanted to quit, but wasn't allowed, but I wanted to leave. BADLY. The customers were draining me, killing my soul with their ceaseless pettiness and stupidity.
Then te movie Clerks came into my life and I saw my future. I would cease being the man I was, the good employee who always came in when needed, always stayed late, always wound up with 5-10 hours a week docked from his pay. I would retire the I and unleash the Id.
I would become Randal. More to follow.
During the course of my 13 years of employment, I have learned something that I would like to pass along to the rest of you, something quite important when you next seek out gainful employment.
For te love of God and all things holy, do yourself a favor and avoid working for a Subway restaurant. Seriously. I'm begging you here, if you accidently put in an application for a Subway and they happen to call you back for an interview, fake cancer or dismemberment. Why, you ask? Well, then Reader, apparently you have never worked for one of these places before. Allow me to enlighten you.
1: I've worked for 6 different Subways under 3 different owners (strangely they were transfers at the new owners' requests due to hours I picked up at their stores). In every situation, the owners did not pay overtime. At all. Two of them would at least make an attempt to keep employees' hours under 40; the third would just dock your pay an hour for every hour over 40 that you made. Yeah, it's illegal, but he always got away with it because he had good lawyers, so I heard.
2: The customers. My God in heaven, the customers. The most petty, clueless, mean-spirited folks I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with... and that includes my work checking IDs and explaining rules to drunken college kids at a strip club.
3: Customer story 1. I lived in Florida at the time and my area had just been struck by 4 major hurricanes in a 2 month period. The last hurricane to hit was Wilma, which those of you who lived in the Palm Beach County area will remember with a shudder, I assume.
I was working 12-hour shifts 8:00am to 8:30pm--the curfew for the post-hurricane Mad Max-like Palm Beach County was 8:30pm, so technically by leaving at 8:30pm we were breaking the law... which is why it pays to give free stuff to cops. More on that later...
Anywho, since we're the only joint open in Boca Raton apparently, and since this was in the pre-five-dollar-footlong days, we had an after-5pm special, which was buy-one-get-one. Since, again, we were the only place open, we went around to every Subway in the area and bought up the inventories; we wouldn't be getting a food delivery for "the duration of the emergency." I suggested to the owner that we not honor the after-5pm special, that way we wouldn't run out of food so quickly. He agreed, and we posted signs everywhere. Literally everywhere: On the door, the window; the glass near the bread section, meat section, veggie section; the registers and coke coolers, too. The lines stretched around the shopping center and we were doing at least 100 footlongs an hour. Guess how many people after five would come in and order 2 footlongs, hear me say "just so you know, we're not offering the BOGO during the duration of the emergency, will that be OK?" yet expect the BOGO anyway?
Yeah, quite a few. A lot of threats about calling the better business bureau and reporting us for price gouging came and went, but obviously NOT honoring a specific discount for a period is quite different from raising existing prices. But I digress.
I decided to put in my two weeks after that week, mainly because my "excuse" of wanting to cut up a 60-foot pine that fell in my yard partially destroying my roof was not good enough to avoid the 12 hour shifts every day that week. Boy oh boy, you'd think that I asked for a pound of flesh! My resignation was not accepted and would not be accepted.
In a way I was kind of pleased. Apparently I was such a good worker that this guy didn't want to lose me. On the other hand, I had been offered a position at another place which paid $2 more an hour. So I was in a quandry. I wanted to quit, but wasn't allowed, but I wanted to leave. BADLY. The customers were draining me, killing my soul with their ceaseless pettiness and stupidity.
Then te movie Clerks came into my life and I saw my future. I would cease being the man I was, the good employee who always came in when needed, always stayed late, always wound up with 5-10 hours a week docked from his pay. I would retire the I and unleash the Id.
I would become Randal. More to follow.
He is my Black Dragon (and yes, a good one) strong, protective, the guardian. I am his Silver Dragon, always by his side, shining for him, cherishing him.
Maybe he thought you were a doormat, or, like someone else said, the honorable type. (which usually translates to 'doormat' to honorless pigs! 
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