Bad Sandwich Experience

Normally when I'm at a food place, I like to order the biggest size of a food available. It's because I'm an important person. So when I was at a sandwich shop last week, I ordered two of the large sub sandwiches. One was a hot meatball sub, and the other was a cold sub. The plan was that I would eat the hot one there and take the cold one with me. I didn't get any drink with it because drinks are for suckers. I sat down to eat my sandwiches and listen to other people make their orders, because I like to eavesdrop on business transactions. About half a dozen people made orders, and I noticed that they were all ordering medium size sandwiches, not large. This was making me really nervous. Maybe everybody knows something about sandwich sizes that I don't. I'm relatively new at eating sandwiches here. I've only done it maybe five or six times in all. I don't quite feel part of the sandwich shop subculture. I started thinking that maybe the large and medium size are the same size but the price is a lot higher. Afraid that everyone but me was in on one big joke, I wrapped up the other half of my second sandwich and got out of there. (Oh, my plan had changed at one point: at first I was going to not eat the second sandwich at all, but then I decided I'm a big guy, I should eat both of them right then and there.)

So now today, I was back at the sandwich shop again. I knew the secret code this time. Nobody would laugh at me. I looked at the guy taking orders and told him I wanted two medium subs (one was bacon, the other was bits of steak or something). I felt pretty good about myself, like we had just become best buddies. I could rely on him and tell him all my secrets. We shared a deep telekinetic link. But then, I looked forward for a bit and saw the line of people at the drinking fountain. They had these huge clear plastic cups. You can't get a cup like this if you order a small or medium drink. I turned back to the cash register and saw a stack of them, then quickly added onto my order one large drink. He gave me the big cup and I took it right over to the drink fountain. Now, I know the secret about drinking fountains; I'm not stupid. Ice takes up a lot of space and ends up watering down the drink, so if you put ice in your cup, you lose at drinking fountains. I knew the plan, but then as I was about to fill the cup with tea, I started to get nervous. What if they catch me not using ice? I'm supposed to be on the sandwich shop's side now. My new best friend certainly wouldn't think highly of my actions. So I compromised and put in a small amount of ice cubes, against what I knew was right. Still being nervous, I messed up big time on selecting a top for the cup, taking the one for the medium cup instead. I quickly took it off and tried to shove it under the drink stand. I don't think anyone saw. I took the largest size one next and it fit. But now I had another problem: there were two selections of straws for me to choose from. Being nervous still, I took the ones in the opaque paper covers since I'm more comfortable with straws coming that way, but at the last second I suspected that the ones in the clear covers were longer and meant for my large cup. It was too late though, I couldn't go back. I had already made too many mistakes here. My next move was to sit down so that I would appear as a customer who was planning on eating in the shop, not taking the food somewhere else. It's important to know how to correctly broadcast social signals. As my sandwich is called out by the employee that made it, I made sure to ignore the first call. I didn't want to seem too eager to have the sandwich. I'm a pretty cool dude. I don't need the sandwich. After the second call of my order, I got up, took my sandwiches and returned to my seat. When I unwrapped them, I was totally shocked. They looked so tiny and not bursting with meat! I was so embarrassed! Here I was with these wimpy sandwiches not befitting of a great sandwich eater like myself, and a ridiculously large drink to go with them. I managed to enjoy the sandwiches as best I could under the circumstances, and ran out of the store, ashamed of myself.