During my time at VT, I lived for two years in the Collegiate Court apartments, which are on Main St. beside El Rodeo. Given that Sub Station II was one of the closest places to get food, I ate there A LOT. I ended up taking an extra semester to graduate (basically an intentional way to enjoy an extra football season on campus), and I spent the summer working in Blacksburg between my penultimate and ultimate semesters. It was an awesome time and I look back on it with a lot of fond memories.

I worked on a construction crew that summer and would usually have a pretty voracious appetite at lunchtime, so I frequently got a 12" sub from Sub Station II and took it to work as my lunch the next day. Well, one evening I got distracted goofing off and realized at about 8:50 that I had nothing for lunch the next day and needed to go to Sub Station II before they closed for the night. I think I walked in about 8:55 and realized that they closed in 5 minutes, and I could tell as I opened the door that the only guy still working had already cleaned all of the meat slicing equipment and was ready to get out of there. I contemplated just turning around and leaving right then and there, but I needed something for my lunch, and decided to place my order anyway.

As I asked the guy for a 12" Super (I think that's what it was called), I could see the rage in his eyes. I've never felt like someone wanted to murder me before, but in that moment, I believe that Sub Station II employee would have gladly killed me if he could have gotten away with it. I watched him aggressively slice all of the deli meats and then slap them onto the sandwich bread with anger. Finally he wrapped up the sandwich, and I paid and slipped out of there as quickly as I could, feeling bad on my walk home. I don't think I went back for a long time after that, but I'm pretty sure that guy gave me the evil eye the next time I saw him there.

My apologies if you're reading this post, Sub Station II guy. Please forgive me.