where i come from they call me mr wrong

from my time spent working at Subway there is really only one employee that i remember liking working with. The owner and his wife were not so bad but most of the other employees were multitardsd for one reason or another. but this kid Kyle (on left in picture, ya dopeass) kept me amused for hours on end. sure he was in high school. sure he was a little bit dorky. but damn he was fun to work with. one of the more responsible people i worked with there. but he was still a trouble maker. most of it was pretty much harmless stuff. but it made the night go quicker. too bad the owner split us between the two stores so often. something about not wanting all of his good employees at one location. just remember that all of this was done out of site of customers, if there were even any in the store(s) at all.

one of the things he started was altering drinks. dumping what ever was in it and putting something else in it. making me constantly think i had just drank out of his cup. one time i got suspicious and got a new one. he started laughing because the combination of Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper was identical to what he had just poured in. he had never paid attention to what i actually drank and he thought it was funny. from about that point on we both started sniffing our drinks before we enjoyed them. not shocking. this is actually the habit that saved him from my big payback. i had dumped some jalapeno juice into his drink. he dumped it without even saying anything. i think i won that battle.

i was the one who taught him about the "3 second rule" and we expanded it from there. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and on and on. for those who do not know, it means that a pice of food is still good if it has been on the floor less then x amount of time. then came bigger questions. what if it gets thrown against the wall? what if it hits the ceiling? don't worry, we never serveed that food. if it hit the floor we usually set it aside and then threw it around before throwing it into the trash. it was not cost effective but it was more ethical. of course some time it did get served after it hit the floor. only because the manager was there.

sometimes we even played in positive manners. while trying to figure out what we were going to eat one night we came up with a really great idea. let's have pizza. we had everything we would need right in front of us so there was no reason not to. we even went down the list just to make sure we had not forgotten something. so we came to the agreement that he would help the customers while i worked on prepping the dough. the dough came frozen and preshaped so it was going to take some time. as it was thawing, i helped out with the customer that came in. once that was taken care of i started to pillage for all needed items. got everything together and then hit a slight problem. there was bread in the oven still. i hate when work gets in the way of an idea like this. so i set it aside and took care of the bread. the pizza was actually already starting to cook before i got all of the bread taken care of. we both stayed up front while it was cooking with me woking the end by the oven and Kyle doing registar and such. we had no idea how long it was going to take to cook so we had to keep aware. once it finished, and all customers were gone, we ate like kings. even if it did not taste that good, it was still something different.

once he went to the other store things did not settle down that much. there were phone calls back and forth about how to do this or that but there were others too. about once every two weeks i would get a call requesting a couple of sandwiches so fucked up that there is no way the order would be real. problem was that sometimes they were. so i would set the order out next to the bread and then wait to see if someone showed up. for some odd reason, they usually did not show up. i must be psychic or something. and to top it off i would almost always get a call from kyle that night. he just wanted to see how thing were going. sure.

in retaliation for that behaviour, i made a phone call one night. i kind of disquised my voice, poorly, and at about 20 minutes before closing I asked him what time they closed. I already knew it was a slow night at both stores due to a visit from the owner. i also already knew he was there by his lonesome. call it a perfect set up. this was pefect for putting the fear of god into somebody. he was polite in telling me that the store would be closing at 10 pm. then i asked him how much money he normally kept in the registar at that point. the bastard hung up on me. i was still laughing five minutes later when my stores phone rang. he said he had just gotten a weird phone call. I suggested he make a drop, just to be safe. he said he already had. then i told him the truth. the bastard hung up on me again.

another thing he was quilty of was trying to find a girl friend. he tried to make this deal with me that he would introduce me to his sister if i would help him find someone. i repeatedly explained to him that i already had a girlfriend but i would still try to help him. i got a very uncomfortable surprise one night whenever Kyle and a group of people came in and one of them turned out to be his sister. she was much cuter than he had led on. we talked for about half an hour or so while Kyle helped customers and entertained the rest of the group. during that conversation i explained what he was trying to do and that i already had a girlfriend. so many options and i had to pick the right one. still we talked. Kyle tried to convince me that she really liked me but i could tell that just by being attached i was not what she was looking for. nevermind the fact that i was not even looking.

time allowed there to be paybacks for that little adventure as well. Emily, a friend of mine had come up to work with me. it was going to be a slow night and she had nothing else to do, so we talked inbween the few customers. whlie we were talking i came up with the idea that she should call Kyle and mention that someone she knew had mentioned that he was looking for a girlfriend and then play it out from there. so she called. they ended up talking for quite a while. deffinately got his attention. they agreed to that she would come by his store before he closed. it was a quicker turn around this time before my stores phone rang again. he was so excited he could hardly talk. so i did a rushed ten minute close. it was less than ten minutes to his store. it always took him at least half an hour to close. we could make it there before he was gone. and we did. he came out like a jack in the box when he heard the door bell. either he didn't lock the door or it was someone with keys. yeah, i had keys to both stores (safe combination as well). so i asked him how it went. he said something about her not showing up. then i turned and said 'have you met my friend Emily?' i really thought he was going to cry. and i apologized. this one had gone way too far. i apologized again and Emily and i both left feeling like assholes. the joking around pretty much stopped right there.

the last time i saw him, he was working at the Blockbuster i was using at the time. he was busy helping customers but never acknowledged my presence. can't ssay i blame him. hope he found that girl he was looking for. and yeah, i'm still sorry i had to learn that lesson at his expense.