Disclaimer: The Daily Tar Hell is purely satirical. Don’t take it too seriously.
Following a breach of containment, the Subway infection at NCSU has spread to Franklin Street. Having been afflicted by four separate Subway locations in the general campus vicinity, two of which are currently located on the school’s main Hillsborough Street, NC State has been looked upon with a mix of pity and disgust by those who value anything above a mediocre culinary experience.
Students of Chapel Hill had long thought the disease of the cheap, low-quality sandwich shop was contained, non-contagious and benign. However, after several more installments of the fluorescent-tube-lit, barely passable eatery began to pop up along I-40 west, containment efforts went underway to prevent spread of the infection to Chapel Hill. The effort proved futile last Thursday night when, according to the CCDC (Center for Culinary Disease Control), a brand new Subway location appeared, crammed needlessly between a barber shop and a hookah lounge on Franklin Street.
“We would like to remind everyone that this does not necessarily mean the end of good food, nor the beginning of a pandemic,” said an unnamed spokesperson for the CCDC. “Everyone please remain calm.”
Witnesses of the event, however, shared a much different outlook. “It’s the beginning of the end,” said Joel Joelstein, a junior majoring in macramé studies, “The subway, it — it just came up out of the group through a lesion in the earth. The whole building squirted out like pus, filling up that tiny bit of space leftover between ‘We Cut Your Hair Good’ and ‘Hella Hookah.’ I give it two years before this whole campus is just teeming with excessive amounts of soggy lettuce and subpar customer service. I just hope to god it doesn’t spread to our student union…”
Some students are already resigned to their fates of outdated interior decorating via tacky stock photos of vegetables framed on the walls and extremely uninteresting brands of toys added to the kids’ meals. “I mean, we could try and fight it, but what’s the point?” said downtrodden Chris Christopher, a sophomore studying micro-macro freakonomics. “They never completely go away. One shuts down, then three more pop up, no matter how few people you ever see going into them. How do they stay open? Who knows. Either way, sooner or later you just end up with a mouthful of week old tuna and clumpy mayonnaise on dry, half-grain bread.”
Stacy Stacyenne, a senior in “something to do with journalism probably,” shared similar sentiments: “I went into one once. I ordered a bacon, ham and cheese on flatbread, and the girl at the counter asked me if I wanted it toasted. Like, it’s flatbread, it’s made to be toasted. What, do you think I’m just going to eat soggy flatbread with questionable deli meats slammed on top? When I told the manager that I was officially giving up on life, they offered me a job on the spot and said that I showed exactly the level of initiative and enthusiasm they expect in their employees.”
Yet other students say not all hope is lost. Subway survivors are banding together to repel the fast food farce from campus, united under the slogan of “Beat Fresh!” A march is being organized to raise funds that will go towards building a Jimmy John’s treatment facility across the street from the site of the Subway infection. Organizers of the event on Facebook advise participants to bring raincoats and ketchup to spray as a sign of solidarity against the chain’s repulsive selection of mustards.
