You enter a Subway store, and it’s empty, slightly too cool to be comfortable, slightly too damp to feel clean, and slightly too bright to be inviting. There is one lonely employee, who does their best not to look at you for those awkward 10 seconds while you walk to the counter before you’re close enough to order. You know you interrupted them while they were doing something else. They give their greeting, ask you what you want, you begin scanning their workspace. The bins of raw ingredients are sitting askew, separated by steel walls, yet careless hands have dropped some of each on all the others. The preparation area is littered with crumbs and bits of lettuce, maybe the odd olive or onion piece here or there that has wedged itself into the crack between the food trays and the cutting board. This could have been cleaned up while nobody was there, but the employee doesn’t care. For one second you wonder how it got messy in the first place given the lack of customers. Maybe it’s staged, like those first few pennies in a homeless person’s hat. Do you want it toasted? You do, but that would mean standing here for a minute with the stranger you disturbed waiting for the bread to be sanitized. You observe the employee assemble your sandwich, making sure to painstakingly put each ingredient on only one half of the sub. You ask for sauce and they squeeze it out of a disgusting rubber nipple, then toss the bottle back into its bin like they don’t want to touch it either. Are they wearing those gloves to keep the food clean, or their hands? You pay, the sandwich heavily sags into a flimsy garbage bag it doesn’t really seem to fit in and is handed to you. You walk out, into the light of the sun. The colors suddenly seem real again and you become aware of your breathing because the air feels rich and life giving somehow. The distant memory of tasty subs that brought you here lingers just beyond the edge of clear recollection, like an old acquaintance who’s face you can’t picture anymore. You carry your catch to the car. When did it get this bad?