The Ten Subway Commandments

Imagine that you’re watching House M.D. In this episode, a random woman is walking in to Subway to get her lunch. Since she’s the first person on screen and the camera is following her, you expect that this is the person who will soon fall victim to a terrible and likely disgusting illness or condition. As the seconds pass by, she waits in line. The camera pans and flies by and then finally zooms in on her eyes. Where is the blood? What orifice is unpleasantry about to erupt from? As the music builds to a fevered pitch, the woman we are tracking reaches for her cell phone and dials 911! The obese woman in front of her has collapsed beneath a pile of 13 foot long Subway Sandwiches. Cue the title theme. To make a long story short, it’s not lupus, nor is it any disease that House or any other fictional doctor has ever heard of. Heck, there isn’t a real doctor alive who could figure this one out. It’s because this woman has been stricken by an affliction that most don’t even consider to be an affliction: she’s a douchebag.

While I consider it an affliction, the rest of the world doesn’t seem to agree. Some even revel in the fact that they make life worse for other people by being unreasonable, unruly, and generally unlikeable. The thing that’s really set me off as of late, however, is the fact that I can’t even walk into Subway without encountering a terminal case of douchebaggery. I say terminal, because one of these days they’re going to be in line in front of a bona fide gangster, who will proceed to lodge a bullet into their skull by means of a metallic projectile delivery system. It’s not that hard to be a decent person in the Subway line. It really isn’t. That’s why when I see these people and their 13 sandwiches and their quadruple portions of 7 toppings that take a full half an hour to prepare, it makes me angry. As a guide for those who think they may be afflicted by terminal douchebaggery and hope to avoid becoming a corpse or a case for a fictional genius curmudgeon, I’m afraid the best I can offer is these Ten Subway Commandments. Why Ten Commandments? Because they need something better than the “5$ Footlong” commercials to play during Charlton Heston’s 6 hour stint on national television every Easter.

I. Thou shalt not order more sandwhiches than thou possess limbs to carry them.

This one seems pretty straightforward to me. You’ve got two hands. Each hand in an ideal world carries one sandwich. Thus, unless you’re one of the X-Men or a fugitive on the run from the Men in Black, you’ll be ordering at most 2 sandwiches. If you’re there with a group, the entire groups sandwich count shouldn’t exceed the number of hands amongst you. Really, it’s not that difficult. If the rest of the folks at the office want a sandwich, they can come get it themselves. If you really need to feed the entire office, phone it in! There’s a reason they offer that service. It’s so that you don’t piss me off by standing in front of me and ordering enough sandwiches to feed a small army.

II. Thou shalt not place a salad atop thy sandwiches.

Alright, perhaps a little vague here, but certainly not as vague as “honor thy father and they mother.” The point here is that the toppings are just that, toppings. Not separate meals. If you want a salad order a salad. Your sandwich should not look like the side of a geological dig in which you can clearly tell which era each block of toppings was placed in. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Sandwich artists hate putting toppings on your sandwich. They especially hate doing it for two minutes because you need to make sure the topping distribution is perfectly vertically symmetrical.

III. Know what thou desirest.

There’s nothing worse than seeing someone walk up to take their turn at the counter and then freeze for five minutes while they figure out what they want, especially if they’ve been waiting more than that amount of time. I mean, what are you doing while you’re in line if not deciding what you want to eat? The New York Times Crossword? The Jumble, perhaps? Lord help me if I see you filling in a Cryptoquip instead of deciding what you want to eat I’ll force feed that paper to you before you can claim to have great “Fort-itude.”

IV. Thou shalt not screw it up.

Let’s say that you do know exactly what you want. It’s your responsibility as a human being to get the words out of your mouth in a manner which another human being can understand and act upon. They’ll definitely do their best to confirm with you what you want before they go racing to finish your sandwich. If your words are perfectly clear, except the words you use aren’t the words one would need to hear in order to create the sandwich to your specifications, it is your fault, not theirs. Yes, they’ll fix it to you, but it’ll also drive them one step closer to axe-crazy.

V. Thou shalt not change thy mind.

No real explanation required here. There’s no excuse for waiting until your sandwich is all but completed and then deciding you actually wanted a totally different sandwich. Jerk.

VI. Thou shalt keep the details of thy personal life personal.

I think the thing that gets me the most when I’m at the Subway waiting behind a douchebag is when they’ve got their little earpiece on and they’re screaming into it as if they need to drown out the noise of a passing train. Two things. First, it makes you look like you’re a lunatic screaming at nothing and no one in particular. Second, I don’t want to hear about what and who you did last night. I really, really don’t. I don’t even know you, so what makes you think for even one second that I want to hear about the fantastic sex you had last night. Trust me, I don’t. My worst Subway experience involving the details of someone else’s personal life was the one where I had to put up with the guy in front of me flipping out at his girlfriend over the phone because she had called to tell him she’s pregnant. Unlike Argus Filch, I don’t miss the screaming.

VII. Thou shalt not get it on in line.

No, really. You’re there to order a sandwich, not play tonsil hockey. Hands definitely shouldn’t be beneath clothes and really shouldn’t be grabbing, stroking, or poking anyone’s naughty bits. If you can’t keep your clothes fully on in Subway, you might have a problem. Who am I kidding, you do have a problem. Get a room and let me order my damn sandwich.

VIII. Thou shalt not criticize the sandwiches of others.

Maybe you think you’re being friendly or helpful, but you aren’t. There’s a reason that I get my sandwiches the way I do. It’s because I like them that way. Not the way that you think I should have it, but the way that I do have it. That’s the one I like. Your opinion is about as useful to me as a condom dispenser in a monastery.

IX. Thou shalt not talk to me.

This is different than VIII in that VIII tells us that we should all respect the sandwich preferences of our fellow men and women. This tells you not to talk to me. Sure, I might make an exception of you’re a beautiful girl that just has to give me her phone number, but there’s a good chance that doesn’t even require a full-blown conversation, which is the thing IX is trying to prevent. I don’t go to Subway to talk about the weather or the recession or the most reliable way to out a female spy. (PROTIP: Get her pregnant and check which language she screams in during childbirth.) I go to Subway because I would like a sandwich.

X. Thou shalt not go to Subway in the first place.

Like abstinence, the only safe way not to appear to be a douchebag in Subway is to not go to Subway. Also like abstinence, it’s not very fun. If you don’t think you can follow Commandments I through IX, try taking X for a spin for a while. Who knows? You might enjoy it! No one will notice the jerk-shaped hole in the surroundings.