subway sandwich hyper-activity disorder
 I worked at a Subway sandwich place for a few months when I was about 21 or 22. It was a pretty nerve-wracking experience at first, especially on the first day.
When I came out behind the sandwich counter and made my first sandwich for a live customer, it was like I was on stage taking an IQ test in front of a bunch of strangers.
The first thing I had to do was make that special cut in the bread where all the meat and vegetables were supposed to go. I would concentrate really hard on making a straight line with the knife across the long loaf of bread. But sometimes, especially at the beginning, the knife would go off course and come out the side of the sandwich. Or else it wouldn't go clean through the bread and I would have to start picking the cut piece of bread out with my hand. All the while I could feel the Subway customer watching me and evaluating my competence.
I had this tremendous sense of responsibility as I made a Subway sandwich since it was this thing that the customer was going to put in his or her mouth and swallow and live off of for the next few hours. And sometimes the pressure would make me mess up or forget where the roast beef or horseradish sauce was.
During the morning it wasn't such a bad time to be unsteady and incompetent. There was usually just one or two customers at a time and you had a chance to think. But when lunch hour hit there would be this big crush of hungry people. They all had very specific sandwiches that they had been ordering for weeks and they had a very short lunch hour and very little patience.
My first lunch hour rush, it was like I was operating on dozens of critically ill babies that belonged to the people in front of me. I could hear people mutter things and see them glaring at me out of the corner of my eye as I messed something up. Suddenly I would hear, "oh my god, I said no mayonnaise!" Then I would just kind of lock up and stare at this loaf of bread that had mayonnaise on it. One of the Subway people would just take the bread and throw it in the trash and start the sandwich from scratch for me. I would feel the blood rush to my cheeks, knowing I had just cost the Subway sandwich company a loaf of bread and wasted this customer's valuable time.
But after a while, I began to get better and better at making the sandwiches. I discovered that you could keep up with the lunch time rush by doing this assembly line method of sandwich-making. The first person just said, "white or wheat?" and then "six inch or foot long?" and then they would cut the bread and pass it to the next Subway guy. Then they would just say, "what kind of vegetables?" and "do you want a value meal?" And so on down the line.
Before long you acquired this kind of of perfect, zen-like harmony with the sandwich making process. When a customer walked in you would put them on the defensive. "White or wheat!" you would shout at them. "Six inch or foot long!" The customer would have to put down his newspaper and clear his throat and do things at your tempo. It was like you were the master and the customers were your slaves. When you were really in the zone, your hands were just a blur in front of you: slicing, squirting, stuffing, passing all without thinking or hesitating. When you were in this zone, two or three subway guys could conquer the lunch hour rush, no sweat. You pushed people through the line almost as fast as they could walk. And if someone was really, really good, a single Subway guy could handle a lunch rush all by himself. This was the Jedi Knight level of Subway sandwich making.
Fortunately, I didn't have to work at Subway for too long. (I stepped up to being a bus boy at a Cha-Cha CoConuts for more money.) I was glad I escaped the the Subway scene when I did because I began to see what too many years of Jedi sandwiching making status could do to your mental health. There is a final stage after Jedi status that is some sort of delirious, hyperactivity disorder when all of your reflexes disintegrate into an illogical sandwich mess-making madness.
I encountered this one time when I went to order a turkey sandwich many years after I had left Subway. I was the only customer in the store, and was in no rush what-so-ever, but still the crazed subway guy assaulted me with full Jedi sandwich guy mania.
"Welcometosubwaywhiteorwheat!" he screamed at me when I was still barely inside the door.
"Um, I'll have a turkey--" I started to say.
"Whiteorwheat! Whiteorwheat!" the subway guy babbled.
"I'll have white br--"
"Sixinchorfootlong! Sixinchorfootlong!" the sandwich guy spat, as if I was messing up his system. When I answered him the Subway guy proceeded to pull a loaf of bread off the tray and attack it with his knife like it was a killer cobra that was about to bite a busload of preschoolers.
"Whatkindofcheese!" he said. The sandwich guy glared at me impatiently, his fingers tapping and eyes twitching.
"Um..."
"Americanswissorprovolone! Americanswissorprovolone!" he said.
When it finally got to the meat and vegetable part, the sandwich guy just went totally insane. He started slapping turkey and and tomatoes and onions in a rabid, fury. He grabbed the mustard and mayonaise bottles and squeezed the living hell out of them and they made those horrible farting noises and yellow and white spray went everywhere. Then he took the abortive collection of meat and cheese and vegetables and crushed it all into a sandwich bag.
It wasn't 19 seconds after I first walked in the door that the crazed Subway guy handed me this squished, leaky disaster rolled up in wax paper.
"Thankyouforeatingatsubwayhaveagoodnight!" he said at last, gasping for breath.
I took my Subway sandwich and got the hell out of there.
5:58:15 PM 
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ULC 5.0