The Subway chain of sandwich shops led the way in the ongoing trend at fast food restaurants where you are inundated with annoying questions, superfluous choices and an ordering process that is more like an interrogation session than what you came for, which was a quick and easy meal.
Choosing the type of sandwich you want is difficult because instead of making it easy by numbering the choices, Subway chooses to plaster the options in a helter skelter fashion all over the walls. The choices are not even in any kind of logical order. Looking at the menu board on the wall of your Subway restaurant may very well convince you that you somehow managed to drop acid before getting into your car and going to get what you thought would be a simple sandwich.
Next comes questions about bread. There is apparently their regular kind of bread, wheat bread or a variety of "gourmet" breads, as if you actually went to a fast food restaurant because you are into the whole gourmet kick. People who want gourmet foods go to a gourmet restaurant for a drawn out sit-down meal or cook their own food at home. If only these people could grasp that concept, things wouldn't begin quite as badly as they do during the whole "Subway experience."
After the whole bread fiasco, there may be an effort at cute or funny conversation from your "Subway sandwich artist." I've managed to cut this off before it starts, but others report they have been trapped in conversations at Subway. I feel your pain. Often, if you just look sternly at the sandwich maker and say nothing, they will not continue their attempts at cute and funny conversation. I recommend this tactic.
Okay, let us assume you have made it past the confusing menu board and the bread issues and have gotten the sandwich maker to stop trying to draw you into an inane conversation. This is the point at which you start to believe you are safe and will soon be eating a sandwich and filling the void in your stomach that brought you to Subway in the first place. You are not safe. Regardless of what you tell them you want on your sandwich, they will go through each bucket of vaguely fresh toppings and ask you if you want that topping on your sandwich. Even if you try to avoid this by ordering a meatball sub (which they call something else in order to make it almost impossible to order the meatball sub) and tell them, "I just want whatever you call a meatball sub on your regular bread with provolone cheese and nothing else on it," you are not safe.
The last time I tried to order whatever they call a meatball sub at Subway, in the exact fashion as stated above, the interrogation continued and it including the following question, "Spinach?" I don't know who eats meatball subs with spinach on them, but I will not be friends with these kinds of people.
So, in review, if you like being hassled with unending streams of questions, enjoy idle chit chat with someone who tries to be cute and funny (but rarely does a very good job of it), then your local Subway restaurant is the place to go. If, like me, you feel that fast food is something that should be quick and easy, steer clear of this chain.