A few days ago I walked up to an ATM machine, punched in my PIN number, and etc. I told the thing I wanted twenty bucks, and it gave me two tens.
Usually it spits out twenties, but this time it was two tens. Huh. Was it out of larger bills, I wondered? Or did they reprogram it for some reason? And if they reprogrammed it, why? What’s their angle on this? How are they benefiting?
These are the kinds of things I think about all day.
Then I went to Subway, ordered a twelve-inch BMT on white bread (I refuse to call it Italian), with lettuce, tomato, onions, and green peppers.
“No dressings?” the sandwich engineer asked, disapprovingly.
“No, because I can’t trust you. I wouldn’t mind a little mustard, but you’d go to town with it and completely ruin my lunch. Oh, I’ve been around, pal, and know how these things go. You Subway folk don’t know moderation when it comes to the sauces and whatnot. So I’d rather just go without, than to eat a goddamn foot of mustard,” I said inside me head.
“No,” I said out loud.
He removed his hand prophylactics and tried to sell me all manner of add-ons: drinks, cookies, chips, possibly a cantaloupe (I can’t remember). I rejected them all, and he rang me up.
“Do you have a Subway Club card?” he wanted to know.
“No I don’t, because I am a man. I’d rather put a bullet through my head than to carry around a membership card for a sandwich club. Seriously, I can’t think of anything douchier. Real men, with actual balls, don’t join submarine sandwich consortiums,” I said inside my head.
“I think I left it at home,” I said out loud.
“Remind me next time, and I’ll get you caught-up. …This’ll be $6.38,” he said.
I handed him one of the tens, and 62 cents rolled down a curved chute and came to rest in a container at the bottom. Apparently it was going to be up to me to scoop up my own change? And isn’t that kind of rude? It’s one step above just throwing it in the floor.
The guy was telling me how I could use my Subway Club points to get free food, or if I let them build up over time I could get things like mp3 players, etc. He said I should check out their website when I get home, and I lied and told him I would.
Toney wanted me to pick up something at the grocery store, so I went there next. And when I got to the self-checkout (I now go out of my way to avoid living, breathing cashiers) I realized the Subway dude didn’t give me my three dollars. All the change I’d received was what came down the coin flume.
Grrr…
There was something, deep inside my brain, that told me the same guy had almost “forgotten” my change once before. I couldn’t remember it clearly, but I sorta recalled him becoming extra-talkative during the ringing-up process, and nearly “forgetting” to give me my folding money.
I’m going back there, I decided. No way I’m allowing someone to scam me in such an old-school Paper Moon manner. Those three dollars — my three dollars — are probably already inside his pocket, I knew, and this caused steam to come blasting from my ears.
I power-walked to the car, preparing for battle. I’d either be leaving that sandwich shop with my money, or in handcuffs.
Then I had to wait until a Civil War veteran backed his Buick LeViathan from a parking space at 1 mph, and finally, eventually got out of my way. Maybe he was preoccupied with his musket, I don’t know.
And there was a mini-traffic jam near the front of the store, because lazy bastards stop their cars there and load their groceries. “The parking spaces are right over there!” I want to yell. “You seriously can’t walk another ten yards?”
I nearly ran over a woman with her head cocked to one side, holding a cell phone between her shoulder and ear. She’d darted in front of my car, but gave me a dirty look. And so it goes.
After I negotiated that particular cluster, I realized I’d now have to wait for the world’s longest red light, and somehow cross a non-stop parade of traffic to enter the Subway parking lot. What a gigantic hassle.
I drove the length of the driveway leading to the stoplight, thinking about my upcoming “conversation” with the sandwich artists. And I could hear the manager: “I’ll have to wait until I close out this cash register, sir, to see if we’re over by three dollars. I’d be glad to take your phone number, and call you,” and so on.
And at the very last second, before I had to commit to my planned course of action, I turned right on red and headed home.
Screw it. It’s only three dollars.
Now playing in the bunker
Who takes a 20 from the ATM? I haven’t done that since, I don’t know, Reagan was President. If I don’t grab a 100, I’m back in no time, and that’s a waste of time. Jeesh!
All this talk of sandwiches reminded me of a restaurant in Birch Run MI called Tonys. They make a BLT containing one lb of bacon! In fact everything there is mammoth. Great place to go when you are road tripping! Subway commercials piss me off. I think they totally insult anyone who has a weight problem. There are a lot of fatty haters around these days it seems.The last predjudice that is acceptable.
The Evil Twin and I swore off Subway about a year or so ago. We decided to fall for the $5 foot long deal. I got the roast beef, he got the Subway Club. The roast beef was not even cooked thoroughly and my bun had pink “juice” all over it. Also, both of our sandwiches were just full of gristle. I think they changed distributors when they lowered the sub prices. Even thinking about it makes me feel all hinky in the back of my throat. YUCK!
WVBumblebee – I’m with you on that, but I can’t get a descent Po’ Boy up here either. Zydeco whacks at it but it ain’t what I know. When I come off this diet, I’m gonna have a mean hunger for one.
WVBumblebee – Mothers! Get the Ralph (or the Ferdi if you don’t want cheese). You will forget all about Jersey Mikes. Aaaahhh, NOLA. So much deliciousness!
I hate everything about Subway, from the pre-measured portions divided by slimy wax paper, to the freaky double spout sauce dispensers, the weird way they cut the bread with their cupped hand (what are they hiding?) and that short “knife”, right down to the fecund smell of the place. The tuna subs are not bad though. Probably enough mercury in them to fill a rectal thermometer.
Shiney Rod & WTB….you ain’t telling me anything about the food here.
I’ve been here since May and put on 15 lbs!! The food is almost as good as the music, and the 24 hour bars! I love it that the bars on Bourbon are only required to close 1 hour a year, and whoever came up with the drive thru bars….GENIOUS!!
But sometimes you get a little homesick for some stuff, like a Gino’s pizza bread, or SC sweet tea..
Yes I’ve lived in WV (23 yrs), NC (16 yrs), SC (6 yrs) and now NOLA! My favorite, I think Myrtle Beach.
Eat at home. Tonight I had WVKay chili. I know my hands were clean, the meat was well done, and I didn’t need change or a tip. I didn’t get ripped off or sick. Subway, bleecch.
Wait a goddamn minute! How do you still have the subway club card? They discontinued it here years ago because the grease ball pimple poppers behind the counter kept giving their friends freebies. I loved the satisfaction of earning that free sub! It was my very own Seinfeld moment.
I was hoping right up until the very end that you would go back for the $3. Can’t believe you petered out!
johnthebasket – I need you to go to Smiley’s Subs…which is somewhere in the Seattle area and get me a seafood sub with provolone toot sweet. The best subs ever and it makes me hate Subway a little more each time I go in. (you’re the one from Washington right?)
Ian – I like your little red squirrels with the fuzzy ears. So cute!
Limey, You missed “and etc.” The first sentence was a joke. It’s some of my favorite pet peeves, collected together.
And it’s now unusual to take a twenty from an ATM? I had no idea. I’m in Sheetz almost every day, and hit their no-fee machine as needed. I usually take a twenty. Oh well. I guess I’m out of step.
Hey, hey, RNK…
I’m 30 miles southwest of Seattle, but since there’s not a Smiley’s in Seattle, that don’t matter. There is one in Bremerton, about 30 miles northwest of me, and I’d be happy to make the trip sometime in the next month or so. (Bremerton is what I used, in my younger days, to call a 3-beer trip…Seattle requires the entire 6).
When I get ready to go, I’ll let you know. Feel free to forward your mailing address (no PO boxes please, since that would piss the post office off ) to: johnthebasket@yahoo.com.
And, just to be clear, did you want one toot or two?
jtb
Jeff,
Women get 20 bucks from the ATM. Men get $100. I think we might have to do exploratory surgery in search of an extra X chromosome. Or, as my favorite combo says:
s-e-X-X-Y
More than enough
Around the clock with nobody else
s-e-X-X-Y
best as always…jtb
JTB – Yes it was Bremerton. I stayed for about a month but had been all over the place so couldn’t remember where it was. It was 10 years ago but that’s how great their subs are. I’m scared of what a shipped seafood sub would be like lol. I miss Washington.
Jeff,
Where in God’s name did you get the photo of the Subway workers? It can’t be a Subway glossy, because the three workers look like the gang of Puerto Ricans that shot up the House of Representatives in 1954 (adjusting for age). These workers look angry and ready to place bodily secretions in the next customer’s sub.
If they are the team who waited on you, just go about your business. Never bring a complaint to a knife fight.
jtb
RNK,
If you change your mind about the sub, just let me know. I once bought a cheese steak sandwich for my wife at the Philly airport and delivered it to her in Seattle 6 hours later. The entire DC-10 smelled of onion and greese. I slept using the secret of the long-distance smoking flyer: Xanax. She enjoyed it much more than the United passengers and crew.
jtb
cashoe…WV.Hillbilly and I are both excited to procure (at no cost according to your post of three days ago) one of those fine Tom Waits 8-Tracks. My own 8-Track, installed in my not-so-new touring car, is overflowing with beer scum and tobacco ash, having not been used since I accidentally placed a Hall & Oats cart in there in 1974. I wan’t gay then either, but was much younger and attempting to get laid. My attempts were about as successful as H&O’s attempt to produce a listenable album.
(Jeff still has something to answer for. First, Hall & Oats, then twenty bucks at the cash machine.)
That Tom Waits sure has his fingers on a lot of goodies, including all the right piano keys.
jtb
WVBumblebee – The husband and I used to live in NOLA (Riverbend – just up Carrollton from the Camellia Grill). When people who had never been to New Orleans would come to visit us, he would pick them up at the airport and drive them into Metairie to a little cluster of suburban dive bars somewhere around the causeway by the mall and tell them that was the French Quarter. Oh, the looks on their faces.
Thanks Jason. I printed up that picture and went to Ace Hardware last night and got the exact same trap. Still have no clue how the yard rats got in though.
Ian, I though about turning our evil cat loose up there, but then she probably wouldn’t want to come back down. S’OK with me, but my daughter would be crushed. Who else would she dress up in doll clothes? Certainly not her naked dolls.
On IPOD right now- “Isolation”- Joy Division
WTB… classic. I’ll have to try that! We are in Lakeview right beside Metairie. I do all my shopping and some drinking in Metairie. I’ve LOVED all the food and the neighbors parties that I have been too here. We are looking forward to the VOODOO festival next weekend. Kiss, Eminim (?spelling), and about 50 other bands.
AWG- squirrels can climb up any kind of siding. after you’re done and you get them all out of there you might want to use copper flashing to patch the hole…, since that’s just about the only thing they won’t chew through.
you can’t even have mothballs in a pan/container? screw florida. move away from there.
Nope, it’s a FELONY. Can ya believe that?
Believe me, if I had the money to move again, I would.
On IPOD right now-“Yellow Ledbetter”- Pearl Jam
Ok, since Jeff just admitted to usually pulling only $20 out of the ATM, here’s a new Question of the Day (because today is not yesterday):
When going to the ATM, how much do you normally withdraw?
I am in the boat with $100 or more at one pull-out. Heh.
I have a coworker who tries to use her Debit card EVERYWHERE we go and it drives me apeshit crazy. Half the time the places we go for lunch take cash only, or their machines are broken, etc. and I end up paying for her because she is clutching a useless bronze card in her palm, where I have very useful green paper in mine. Why people feel the need to swipe a card through a reader ten times a day rather than take the damn money out confuses me to no end.
Which makes me think of another question:
Cash or Card?
Now Playing on iPhone: ‘Big Fatty Online’ podcast
I tend to pull out $20-$40 from the ATM at one time. I pretty much never use a debit card. I’m really bad with remembering numbers and don’t really need one more pin number to screw things up. I’ve already had about three ATM cards deactivated for forgetting the pin number. In fact, at the moment I can’t get any money out of the ATM because of a recent fuck up. So maybe I should answer $0? Not really an issue at the moment since the hubby still has full ATM privileges. But yeah, I better get around to fixing that sometime soon, so thanks for the reminder.
@AWG: Thanks for getting Joy Division in my head.
Mother I tried please believe me
I’m doing the best that I can
I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through
I’m ashamed of the person I am
Isolation
Isolatioooooooon
Isolation
Yeah, story of my life, Ian.
Gretchen, I’ve always found that to be the most chilling lyric in all of Ian Curtis’ many chilling lyrics. Especially the fact that he addresses it to his mother — the idea of this “cool rock star” confessing to his mother that he’s ashamed of himself is just as rawly emotional as can be. And the fact that he killed himself within a year or two of writing it is even more chilling.
Second most chilling from Ian is “New Dawn Fades,” including:
“Different colors, different shades,
Over each mistakes were made.
I took the blame.
Directionless so plain to see,
A loaded gun won’t set you free.
So you say.”
awg- nanny state.
it’s bullshit you could also try “humane” traps, but then you have to check them every day… and i’m sure that big brother has rules about killing wildlife…
Awesome! I didn’t know there were so many Joy Division followers on here. I knew that Kathleen from Detroit liked them You guys ever see that movie “Control” about the band?
On IPOD right now- “Terror Couple Kill Colonel”- Bauhaus
Lucas, I would grab the little fuckers with my bare hands and strangle them, if I could catch them.
That line has always had special resonance for me considering my own estranged relationship with my mother and struggle with who I am as a person. But yes, there are many chilling verses to be had in any Joy Division song. I sometimes wonder where Joy Divison would have musically gone had Ian not offed himself. I can’t think it would have been the synth-disco pop that eventually emerged from the ashes of Joy Division. Surely Ian must have been spinning in his grave over some of New Order’s songs.
I know. I hear this bullshit phrase all of the time “New Order rose from the ashes of Joy Division”. Anyone who knows, knows it is not even close to the fucking same thing.
On IPOD right now- “The Days of Swine and Roses”- Thrill Kill Cult
AWG: “Control” is quite good. I saw it in the theater, and then bought the DVD when it came out. I understand the actors actually played the songs live in the film — and they sounded amazingly good, even though (I read) a couple of them learned their instruments solely for the movie. I wished they could’ve actually gone on tour as “The ‘Control’ Band, a Tribute to Joy Division.” It would’ve been much more like actually seeing J.D. than a New Order concert ever was.
Gretchen: Agreed, regarding the spinning.
AWG: I did see the movie. I also read the book when it first came out. I only say “rose from the ashes” because the basic core of the band remained the same as far as members go. There’s no getting around that. And New Order’s first album shows them still trying to be Joy Division-esque, but stumbling without Ian (sorry Bernard, but your little voice could never go to the depths of hell and back). In any event, what they turned into is a whole different animal from Joy Division and I just wonder what Ian would have thought of it all.
AWG, i’d behed them. i’m not cruel (to animals). and strangling is a horrific way to die. i’d rather be guillotined.
By the way, I’m one of those odd ones who came to Joy Division through New Order. Don’t know if that’s rare or not. And with that, I’m out! Later.
Gretchen, that is odd and you are correct that the first New Order sounded similar, as compared to the other ones, which had that dance fell to them. That guy’s voice doesn’t have the pain, like Ian Curtis’s.
Swami, that would have been awesome if they toured as a tribute band. I never knew the actors were the actual performers.
Lucas, I would feed them alka-selters and watch them explode…if they would eat them. Squirrels serve no function. I don’t care about their feelings or pain threshhold.
On IPOD right now- “Celluloid Heroes”- the Kinks
Gretchen — Me too. New Order first. Then Joy Division. It doesn’t matter how you got there as long as you finally made it. Recently saw Control, but am feeling the need to go back and watch 24 Hour Party People again. I have a thing for Steve Coogan and John Simm, so maybe that’s part of it.
Box of 50, .22 long rifle….$4.49
Bottle of decent Cabernet….$9.50
Traget practice while attempting to eliminate a species….priceless.
AWG,
it’s also quicker to just shoot them with a bb gun.
that’s what i’m gonna do with all the cats in my backyard… my neighbor keeps feeding them, and letting them inbread and when i catch them in the humane trap he lets them out.
there’s like 30 cats living in his garage that need to be removed. they have killed one tree in my back yard and are killing the other one.
Two words: Tonka trucks
I live in a college town and seldom see anyone using cash. It’s pretty much all Check or Credit Cards here.
I suppose older wealthy males carry around wads of cash. I found a 100 dollar bill lying in the street the summer before last – so thank you very much.
I pay for almost everything with my debit-that way I really know where it all goes- if I have cash, I swear it just melts away.
whatever Jorge said he was first, it weren’t me
This is gay.
Joy Division
Durutti Column
Thomas Leer
Cabaret Voltaire
A Certain Ratio
dalek I love you
The Fall
Bauhaus
Killing Joke
The The
Early Smiths
The best music of the 80’s was kind of one long, lush prelude to suicide. How the hell did those of us who embraced this wonderful stuff survive anyway?! Probably too stoned to remember.
Jed: Sooooo, was it the music of The Fall or Mark E. Smith’s lyrical[-uuh] delivery[-uuh] that set one up for suicide[-uuh]? Because I still rock out to “O! Brother”, “Cab it Up!”, and “Shoulder Pads”, despite his little vocal tic. Of course, those songs were from the mid-80s I’m-boning-Brix period, not from when they were playing on the same bill with Joy Division.
I am somewhat alarmed. Normally, Jeff slacking on a Wednesday update would be par for the course. Yesterday he said Give me Liberty or Give me Death, or maybe something about getting his $3.00 back from Subway. I worry he cracked.
I have a vivid imagination, and great “antibiotics.” I see Jeff accosting the limp-wristed Artiste, and giving him a savage Atomic Wedgie. Unbeknownst to Jeff, while he his strapping the elastic over LWA’s head, the boy hit the emergency panic button.
LWA has no shame shitting at work, and the sickly sweet and spicy aroma from his unflushed remains reminds Jeff of his trip to waffle house. Jeff knows a real man does not shit at work. He snaps again.
Jeff thinks a swirlie would be the perfect complement to his wedgie, and while he is flushing the Billie Ray Cyrus Mullet of LWA in his own offal, 37 1/2 police officers swarm Subway like they started selling footlong Apple Fritters.
Toney would probably leave him in, I know my wife would. Can’t you get Buck or Metten on the phone?
Good luck, Sir.
This just in…Harriette R. Dog just got shunked! Not making that up. I went out about 2:30am MST, to let Jane The Cat out of the warehouse. She must have been in there when I closed up earlier. It’s about 23 here (no big deal for JTC)…took HRD with me. HRD headed off into the pitch black, I rescued JTC and called HRD back. FUCK!!! That quick and WOW!! Only happened 1 1/2 times before when she was about 8 mos. old. No tomato juice (I drank it in my ‘red beers’) so shampoo, rinse and repeat, over and over. First “bath” she’s had since the pup skunkings. Her trips to the pond takescare of ‘bathing’.
Is it too early or too late for a beer? Not taking a vote here…I submit it is the perferct time for a beer!
Great update, as almost usual, Jeff…but it got me to thinking. When you become the famous author (that we are all hoping for) and don’t have time to give us daily updates anymore, I nominate AWG to take your place. Man, if there were ever two twins seperated at birth, it has to be you two!
And while I’m on the subject of people who truly make me laugh til Diet Pepsi spews out my nose, where the heck is Buck????? Haven’t heard from him in a while. Hope he’s still around.
DTO – skunk, ugh, poor Harriette and poor you! You definitely should have a beer, maybe more.