if the lolcat approves, then i'm all in

Disgusting is in the eye of the beholder. I used to work in a "high-end" gelato store - 100% all natural ingredients, 18% butterfat content, low air, and after a few months I couldn't stand to think about ice cream much less eat it. That girl has to make subs all day long for min wage and no tips - that's disgusting. That said - it was unprofessional behaviour, how old was she? If you like their sandwiches - get another card, lay off the mayo and enjoy.

If you work there all the time, doesn't the food start seeming disgusting just because of how much you see everyone wallow in it?

I have to wonder whether food workers feel that way after a time; that it's disgusting.

Perhaps at a nice restaurant where everyone takes pride it's different, but this is Subway.

It seems like a bit of an over-reaction to swear off of something simply because some random counter jockey doesn't approve of it. I had a barista at Starbucks tell me once that decaf has the same caffeine as regular coffee. She might appear to be in a "position of authority" in regards to coffee, but it doesn't change the fact that she was full of shit.

Well, maybe the employee in question is on a low carb diet. Still, if he was he should of suggested the salad. Though, truth be told their salads are kinda terrible in comparison to others out there. Also, I really don't care much for their subs, as I always put them on the lowest rung of all the sandwich options available to me. I really wish I had an audio clip, than I could tell if he was honestly trying to help this guy lose weight, or just being an minimum wage elitist dick.

I'll tell you this much though. If Subway offered some type of profit sharing for their workers this would never happen.

why would you just assume what you "overheard" was true? They post nutritional facts, do your own research. your turkey breast and ham 6" sub is 290 calories, 4g fat, 1g sat. fat etc... course I'm assuming you aren't asking for extra cheese and a ton of mayo. IMO that's not the sub that's gunna make you fat. now get the philly that'll make you fat with 520 cals and 18g fat. sorry OP but that was kinda silly.

@nerdtalker: Yes. I worked at Starbucks for a good amount of time and felt this way, especially about the Frappuccinos and pastries. I had a customer who would come in every morning and order a venti nonfat, no-whip white mocha and a slice of reduced-fat blueberry coffee cake. She was fairly overweight and thought she was being "good," but even though she ordered nonfat milk and a reduced-fat pastry, her order was still around 700 calories and 20 grams of fat (the white mocha syrup has lots of calories and fat.) I felt bad, but she never asked about the nutritional information, so I wasn't in a position to tell her that she wasn't being as "good" as she thought.
Still not as bad as the people that would order venti Frappuccinos and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I only drank tea/iced tea and ate fruit salads or 8-grain rolls from there after a while.

I think the bigger story here isn't how fatty or not the food is, but how one off-hand comment from an employee can DESTROY a regular customer's business. This employee just cost his employer this customer's long-term business with his opinion which he -really- shouldn't be sharing on the clock.

Let's face it - most workers at fast-food restaurants wouldn't recognise healthy food if it jumped up and bit them on the bum..

What is this card he threw away? Subway shops around here haven't had the "Sub Club" card for a decade.

Phew! Thank the gods there are mandated labeling requirements to ensure that informed customers make their optimal choice, and thus spit in the face (rhetorically, we don't really want to encourage fast food employees in this direction, mkay?) of some of their more ignorant workers.

Why would you put any stock in what a fast food worker claims? It was at minimum unprofessional of her and I would suspect she had an agenda in saying it - passive aggressive behavior towards the company/her boss. I second the above comments. The 6" turkey sub is one of the most health conscious choices you have at fast food. Why knock it because somebody didn't like their minimum wage job.

One of my first jobs was at Subway and the food is all fresh, bread baked daily. Consider sending your story to store/corporate management. You may get a free sub out of it and help Subway weed out a troubled employee.

Didn't Subway stop doing the Subway Card thing a while ago?

I often wonder the same thing. Subway is nasty.

Hit up Lenny's or JJ's if you have one locally.

I think "disgusting" is relative to the person eating it. To me, I hate Subway because their bread tastes really unnatural to me, but my friends love it and nom it up all the time. It's all personal preference.

Besides, Subway sandwiches are mostly lettuce and filling. They're healthy because they skimp on the content (read: meat). It's hard to actually eat anything fattening or bad for you there.

@mocena:

I had an argument with a waitress years ago at an Outback Steakhouse who insisted that the Diet Coke had sugar in it. Just because you work in food doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.

@Bruce Bayliss: That is uncalled for and a vast generalization. I know you are probably a troll but I used to work fast food and I bet I can recognize healthy food better than your fat ass can.

I know that if I ate that much bread on a daily basis, I would weigh a lot more than I do. Subway is the last place I'd go if I wanted to lose weight. Cheese and bread added to the diet are a surefire way to gain weight.

@typoink: Yeah... I saved up like ten of them and then went to redeem one, only to have them tell me that I'd been carrying a stack of trash in my wallet for the past year.

They put barely any meat in your sandwich. I doubt eating there every day could make you fat.

@nerdtalker: One place I worked had a Subway within walking distance. Everything else required driving and fighting midtown traffic. So we ate lunch there frequently. After months of this nobody in the office could stand Subway, not even the smell of it.

I think if you are around something constantly it tends to become unappealing. As far as Subway goes, I don't care for the meats, they are rather prefab.

@omgitsgene: It was a very inappropriate comment for an employee to make at the front counter.

Just imagine if you wandered into the lobby of whatever corporation you might work for and started publicly dissing the quality of your employer or the product.

depends on the store you go to also. there's two subways near my office. one is in a dying outlet mall and i only stop there if i am at the mall on my lunch break to pick something up. fresh, to them, means they opened it this week. they get little to no business as over 2/3 of the mall is empty. it's dry and nasty and i have only eaten there twice, when really desperate and out of time on my break.
the one in the other direction is surrounded by thriving businesses and in the middle of an office park and usually has a line. the food is fresh, the bread is hot and the employees are cheerful.

To me, all mass-produced foods handled repeatedly have a high 'disgusting' probability.

@mocena: Decaf coffee has been shown to have nearly as much caffeine as normal coffee in certain circumstances (bean type mostly) as the process to remove the caffeine isn't complete.

Of course, I probably read this online, so it may be full of shit.

@bohemian: I used to live downtown Philadelphia across from Liberty One Place. They opened a Subway in the building I lived in, and for whatever reason, hooked up Subway's ventilation system through the building's.

I woke up every morning to the smell of Subway's bread baking. It seeped through the ventilation system and flooded every apartment in the building. I was never a fan of the bread to begin with, but the smell of Subway's bread became so nauseating over time that I had to move. I'd wake up every morning feeling sick to my stomach after three months, and it was all due to the bread.

I guess it depends on how healthy the bread is, since that really seems to be a huge chunk of the calories. I suspect even the "whole wheat" bread isn't that great for you and has the same high glycemic load as most refined wheat breads.

@MickeyMoo:

No tips? What subways do you frequent. All ours have very large tip jars at the register you are encouraged to fill.

@mocena: What you should worry about is whether the "decaf" she makes is caffeinated. Maybe she doesn't care what beans she puts in what machine.

Anyone consider that the employee could have been a vegetarian and the thought of someone eating meat (turkey) each day was 'disgusting' and would make you fat?

Or she could be an Atkins follower and think the huge amount of carbs would make you fat.

Or if she is like me, just can't stand the taste of olives.

Or she might know more about where the ingredients have been (remember Domino's videos?)

Given that I used to eat a McDonald's #2 with a Coke (1190) cals when we'd go out for fast food, now I get a Subway Club and Baked Lays for less than half that (450 cals), I'd say it's a much better choice. It's still not the healthiest thing out there, but it works in a pinch.

@Travis Estell: maybe he had a customized capital one credit card he customized with the Subway logo he onced loved, but pitched in scorn. Expect to see future consumerist follow-up stories on how the employee got fired, re-hired, the CEO responds with a "we take quality very seriously" and makes it right by giving the guy free subway for life.

@lpranal:

Yeah I realized last week that the wheat bread at subway was nutritionally inferior to the white bread. It has more calories and high fructose corn syrup, something the white does not. Lately I've been opting for the new flat bread option. About 30 more calories but a decent nutritional makeup.

Some of their sandwiches are rather fatty and disgusting. But there are only a few that I like. I avoid tuna or chicken salad. I think most people are too careless in handling these foods. And I only go to Subway once a week at most.

@SonaliHamlegs: Technically, its not a lolcat yet. NEEDZ MOAR CAPTIONS!

@MooseOfReason:This is exactly why Subway is my road trip food of choice as a vegetarian. There just aren't enough fast, easy, tasty, road-friendly foods that honestly are vegetarian.

Not everyone needs meat. And I don't mean that in a dirty way. :P

But yeah, no matter if you're meaty or veggie, anything will be fattening if you add more cheese or dressings.

@typoink: They did because too many people were stealing, copying, and digging the stamps out of the trash. About a year ago though they started up a new one with actual gift card style cards that you can earn points on. $1 = 1 point and like 45 points is a free 6" sub. I've got one, but I never use it since they give me all my food for free since I work next door.

@Preyfar: It's just as well: the meat there looks like some Fischer-Price idea of what sub meat should look like.

Why post a story where it makes sense to make fun of the guy who ate there every day and likes the food but stopped because he overhead someone he doesn't know say something stupid? I bet this guy has bought every as seen on tv item that comes across the tv.

"six inch turkey and ham on wheat bread with extra olives" makes me gag. So I guess she's wrong about it making you fat--just make sure you eat a lot of donuts and cupcakes and french fries before entering Subway for your purge.

@parrotuya:
I had the tuna sub once and the first thing that came to my mind when biting into it was this tuna tastes like 9 lives. When I complained they laughed. That makes me think they were caught in the act.

@thelushie: So your point is that name calling is uncalled for but then you proceed to do the same? Hypocrite

The employee was just having a bad day. I mean, we've all had a mind-numbing, low-paying job at some point. It gets to the point when you don't want to see another customer again... You're having a bad day, your paycheck's shit, your manager probably just made you wash the bathroom for, 10th time, etc. etc. She saw the customer and lashed out against him. I'm not making excuses for her though, it was still immature and childish.

I think some (not all!!) of the commenters here are missing the point. The healthfulness of the food isn't the issue. The issue is an employee denigrating the food they're serving to this man. That is what put him off his sandwich, and Subway as a whole. I think we can all agree that a small sub, dressed correctly, is pretty low cal. But that's not the point. It's about customer goodwill. This employee was not creating any goodwill.

If you're really trying to get healthy buy a loaf of bread (or some hoagey rolls) and make your own sandwiches. That way you know what's going into it, plus you save a lot of money. A 6" turkey+ham a day, lets say 5 days a week, costs you ~$70/mo, that's more than the damn gym membership. You can make 20 6" subs yourself for probably less than $30-$40.

Are people in here seriously refuting what the employee said? Subway IS disgusting and horribly processed, and although it is better than a greasy burger, it's still far from healthy.

Most of that is due to the fact that their bread is absolute garbage; all the other crap notwithstanding, the flour used to make it is ridiculously low quality, to the point that I don't even know if I can call it bread.

I'd much rather do my research online at places like Yelp and support the local sandwich shops that use high-quality bread, fresh veggies, and fresh carved meat over a place that uses "enriched" flour and has their meatballs packaged in blister packs.

@nerdtalker: I have to say that after working at Arby's for 2 years, I got kind of burnt out on their food. I never thought it was disgusting, but I kinda got tired of looking at it and eating it on my break (I was so glad for Taco Bell next door those last 6 months working at Arby's).

That being said, if I'm given a choice between Subway, Jimmy Johns's or Quizno's. 4 out of 5 times, I'm going to opt for Subway. I always get the same thing (which I know is not that healthy, but healthier than what I could get at the other places): an Spicy Itialian with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, extra pickles, extra olives, banana peppers, cucumbers, and honey mustard. Yummo!

@MickeyMoo:

I worked at a bakery in high school, and for a while couldn't eat donuts. Granted, they are NOT a health food, but I have since relearned to enjoy the fried goodness.

"Subways is as healthy or disgusting as you choose."

Those are some words of wise.