With nearly 43,000 stores, Subway is the largest
fast food chain in the world. But what really goes on behind the cutting
board? Here’s what it’s really like to work for Subway,
according to the people who’ve served the subs. For being the world’s largest restaurant chain,
there’s surprisingly little actual cooking being done at your neighborhood Subway, despite
how fresh they want you to think their food is. It seems like if you can open a bag, you can
handle the majority of the so-called “prep work” being done in the Subway kitchens. According to one person who claims to be an
employee, the meats are pre-cooked and pre-sliced, the bread is already kneaded and portioned,
and even the lettuce comes pre-shredded for the convenience of every sandwich artist. So don’t worry about the culinary skills of
the tired looking teen behind counter. They basically just have to slap everything
together. One former employee explained this disappointing
reality in an anonymous tell-all on the GameFAQs forums, saying, “Frozen meatballs. Prepackaged sauce. Frozen chicken planks. 100% prepackaged meats. […] Frozen cookie dough. Frozen bread dough. Pre-packaged lettuce. Precooked bacon. I think that about covers it.” The employee added that this would all be
fine if Subway weren’t telling customers they could “eat fresh.” “It’s out with the old and in with the fresh.” Speaking of Subway’s “Eat fresh” slogan, even
the freshness of that bag of pre-shredded lettuce has been called into question, meaning
the people who work there may be slinging food they’d rather not eat. Some employees have revealed that in efforts
to save money, managers will sometimes keep pushing food past its expiration date. This isn’t corporate policy, so don’t assume
it’s happening at every Subway. And one employee’s story on Reddit comes to
just the sort of resolution you’d hope for. The poster explained how his former manager,
in an effort to keep food costs down, would do things like change the expiration dates
on certain items so they wouldn’t have to be thrown out. The source added, “He would also take lettuce in a pan and put
it back into the bag. He kept frozen, unbaked bread for over a year. It was so old that the yeast had died, causing
the bread to not rise. He was fired after I got fed up and blew the
whistle to the franchise owner.” But for every brave whistle-blower out there,
how many more employees are forced to use expired products? Old lettuce and deflated bread may be one
thing, but the worst ingredients that employees deal with are Subway’s selection of meats. Even when fresh from the plastic packaging,
many employees could barely deal with the odor. One employee on Reddit colorfully described
it by saying, “The packages of ham, turkey, and cold cuts
smell like bags of farts.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, let things sit
around a while and it only gets worse. Another former employee explained on a different
Reddit thread, “Avoid: Chipotle Chicken & Teriyaki Chicken
(Why? Chicken is given a two day shelf life, once
in the counter. However these two bypass this and get four
days, and can get a little stinky).” Horrifyingly, a third employee revealed even
worse practices, saying, “Chicken teriyaki SHOULD be thrown out by
the fifth day, but a lot of employees just change the date to avoid throwing it out. This means, with shift changes, varying staff
and other factors, five-day chicken could be out as long as nine days.” At some point, employees may be avoiding throwing
out that week-old chicken just so they don’t have to get close to it — hoping the next
poor guy deals with it. Working with expired vegetables and stinky
meats is, on some levels, easy to tell. But sometimes things are not so readily apparent. Subway built its brand on being a healthier
alternative in the fast food market. They have a whole menu dedicated to “Fresh
Fit” eating. “Eating healthy at a Subway restaurant is
easy! We have so many nutritious choices!” And while not exactly part of a perfect diet,
light mayo is still better than regular mayo, right? Sure, except when it’s not. One Viral Thread author and former Subway
sandwich artist revealed that they could be the exact same thing, revealing, “Most of the time, whenever the Light Mayo
bottle ran out, my manager would just tell me to fill it with regular mayonnaise… And this is pretty common in a lot of stores.” Even if one employee knows that one bottle
of mayo is a lie, what about the next shift? Or the next day? How many part-timers are unknowingly squeezing
out false hope of fewer calories? One well-known fact about Subway is that all
of those classic veggie fixings are free and you can pile them on just how you like it
— except for avocado, which, like everywhere else in the known universe, is still extra. But what you might not know is that the guidelines
for portioning these veggies can be pretty stringent, and the olive allotment is by far
the most stingy. One Redditor revealed he was trained to use
“3 olives per 6 inches,” adding, “They have all of these precise quantities,
and my mean b—- manager would give me hell on earth if I put 7 slices on a f—ing foot-long
instead of 6.” So if it seems like the employee has a light
touch with those black olives, just politely ask for more. They don’t have a personal vendetta against
you, they’re just following the rules. And they’re being watched. Be careful, though. Another Redditor simply stated, “I got fired from Subway for ‘putting too
many olives on the sandwiches.'” Try explaining that on your next job interview. No one would really expect a fast food job
to pay the big bucks, but according to some former workers, Subway is just about as low
as it can get. As CNN reports, it’s so bad that between 2000
and 2013, the US Department of Labor initiated more than 1,100 separate investigations into
Subway franchises, leading to over 17,000 Fair Labor Standards Act violations. Subway workers ended up entitled to over $3.8
million in reimbursed wages by 2014. But even when everything is totally above
board, Subway might still not be that great as far as employee compensation goes. One employee on Odyssey lamented in 2016, “My pay will never change. No matter how long I work for Subway or how
well I do my job, my pay will never change. It will always be $7.25 unless I become a
manager then I would get $8.25.” More recent reports on Glassdoor suggest that
those numbers are still fairly accurate. This seems especially rough when you consider
that Subway habitually understaffs the restaurant as well, according the same employee, who
added, “[Usually] I’m by myself and I have a whole
list of things that I have to do on top of waiting on customers. So if you get frustrated because I am not
standing behind the bar waiting on you immediately when you walk in, I’m sorry but I’m not there
just to make your sandwiches.” That’s a big ask for minimum wage with no
real opportunity for improvement. Working in the food service industry, a shift
can have highs and lows. There will probably be more customers at noon
than around 4 in the afternoon — that’s the same with just about any fast food place. But just because it’s busier doesn’t necessarily
mean the lunch rush is the worst. The lunch customers are usually just trying
to cram a sandwich in and get back to work without a fuss. But getting stuck with the dreaded late night
weekend shift is what all employees avoid — and not just because they’d rather be
out living it up. According to Viral Thread, one employee explained, “This is when we have the drunk revelers [REV-uh-lers]
and stoners come in. And yes, of course we know when you’re stoned
– mainly because I once watched a guy eat three footlong meatball marinaras and a pack
of twelve cookies after getting a SERIOUS case of the munchies.” The employee went on to say that the main
issue with the late shift is having to clean up what feels like an endless mess. Everyone has one or two quirky eating habits
— and that’s perfectly fine! But when you spend your days assembling sandwiches
at Subway, you find fun wherever you can; even at the expense of some poor sandwich
lover’s particularities. Employees usually won’t say no to odd requests
— they’re artists after all — but you can bet they’ll gripe about it later. One former employee complained on Oola, “You may think you’re being cool and inventive
opting for four different sauces on your sandwich, but we honestly judge you for being such a
moron. Two sauces? Fine. Any more than that and it just becomes overly
sweet gloop that destroys and overpowers the sandwich.” Even a fairly mundane order can be subject
to ridicule if it’s mispronounced, like the very popular Chipotle sauce, for example. The employee explained, “Chip-ottal. Ship-oat-lay. Chip-o-lata. Ship-ottle. I don’t know what it is about this popular
sauce, but most people really don’t know how to pronounce it […] Subway should really
introduce [an] ‘If you can’t say it, you can’t order it’ [policy].” One of the great things about Subway is the
assembly line-style method of sandwich production that’s been perfected through countless hours
of repetition. Customers get their food quickly and employees
can basically work on autopilot. But when some newbie doesn’t understand how
this system works, it slows everything down and drives everyone up the walls. It ruins the groove that an employee gets
into during the rush hour slam. According to Viral Thread, a former employee
fumed, “There’s nothing worse than dealing with a
customer who has no idea what they want, and dealing with a Subway virgin is a painstaking
process. The most annoying thing is that the instructions
are clearly written on the counter!” It is not just clueless first-timers either. Another employee complained on Reddit, “There is a trend right now at my store where
people want a tuna sandwich but they want the bread and cheese toasted first. It ruins the flow of the sandwich-making process
and it slows down the line.” An assembly line only works when it flows
in, you know, a line. If everyone is jumping back and forth between
stations, it’s just chaos. Despite the fact that your meatball marinara
may taste about the same at all 43,000 stores — the frozen and pre-packaged goods help
ensure that uniformity, of course — Subway is still a franchise operation. That means most Subway locations are owned
and operated by different people. Even if two Subways are only blocks apart,
there may be two completely separate owners. And that means a total crapshoot on what the
work experience is really like. According to Oola, one former employee reflected, “I worked at a store with lovely owners who
were happy for the workers to have any footlong for lunch. However, I had a friend who worked across
town who has nightmare bosses! They weren’t allowed any lunch, were forced
to buy their uniforms from them, and were constantly watched on CCTV. It’s simply the luck of the draw.” So if your boss is holding onto stinky meat
or just unwilling to hire a second hand for the lunch rush, maybe take your sandwich skills
to the Subway across the street. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite
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