When a spontaneous food fight broke out at Subway on Monday afternoon, two-year employee Marc Weiss went straight for the vinegar. With Linkin Park’s “Faint” blaring in the background, a battle ensued, with both sides firing vinegar and oil at each other. Then, Weiss landed one decisive squirt of vinegar in co-worker Dan Chinnock’s mouth and ended it.
While Weiss went for the vinegar without hesitation, it isn’t usually his weapon of choice. Usually he lobs tomato slices at his co-workers.
“Sometimes we just start throwing food at each other, when nobody’s looking so we don’t get into trouble,” said Weiss, a junior studying sports marketing and management. “Tomatoes are the best to throw. The tomatoes stick and leave juice all over you. We just pick whatever veggies are there. We don’t pick the meat, just the veggies, because they fly easier.”
The EMU Subway employees may be a bunch of jokers, but on the positive side, that makes them a regular therapy session for grumpy, stressed-out students, Weiss said.
A line of hungry people forms at Subway between noon and 3 p.m. every weekday that often extends all the way to the elevator in the EMU. But, even then, the Subway employees manage to keep their cool. With the efficiency of a well-oiled machine, or a “perfect assembly line” as Weiss puts it, they each take their positions at the line. One person greets customers and cuts the bread, the next lays down the cheese and so on. But, unlike a machine, they manage to keep the personality in their work, cracking jokes and teasing each other and their customers.
“Students are students, man,” Weiss said. “They come and they think they need their food right away and they hate waiting in line. But once they get there you just joke around with them and make them laugh and make them feel like they’re welcome. We like joking around with people. I’m a joker. I’m the biggest goof-off there. I laugh with everybody.”
His co-worker Shanna Brower agreed, calling Weiss the “loudest, most obnoxious” of any of them, with his friend Desmond Crooks taking a close second.
She added that they have a way of cheering people up because they’re so outgoing.
“It rubs off on them, whether they want it to or not,” she said.
Crooks said his strategy is simple: He just tries to smile and “be a dork” like he always is, he said.
Most of the time the Subway employees manage to cheer up their customers, but occasionally they step on a few toes with their antics.
“Most of the time we just joke around with each other and get people back in the mood,” Weiss said. “Some people have a different sense of humor, but we all get along. You just say that you’re sorry and they smile.”
Crooks said that most of the younger students can joke along, but the professors and teachers aren’t always appreciative of their humor.
“Snooty old ladies that work in the building don’t take it well,” he said.
But Weiss said the Subway crew have learned to take the good with the bad — they love their jobs, even during the chaos of a lunch rush.
“It’s really easy (dealing with hectic times),” he said. “You just have to have a good crew around you. It’s a really laid-back atmosphere. We usually listen to music and talk about other people’s personal lives. We laugh about what’s going on in the world, what’s in sports, George W. Bush, all that stuff. It’s like a friendship; it’s like a family. We all get along very well with one another.”
Weiss said he thinks of himself as a figurative massage for school-afflicted students, but he also gets a great deal of pleasure out of working at Subway.
“I love talking to people,” he said. “And I always have a smile on my face while I’m at work … it’s relaxing for me. It’s better than sitting at home watching TV all day long and doing nothing.”