How Do You Spell Subway? Q-U-I-Z-N-O-S
Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 06:44PM 
All evidence to the contrary, I'm Having A Thought Here is not intended to be a rant blog, a humor blog, a religious blog, a critter blog, a literary blog, a pirate blog, a foodie blog, a fangirl blog, a political blog, a mommy blog, or an ecumenical, spiritual, or grammatical blog.
It's just me blog!
Decidedly eclectic, I think you will agree. Perhaps that is because I refuse to limit my horizons to the interior of any sort of little bitty neatly-labeled box! The vistas available from such a vantage point appeal to me about as much as the prospect of milking a rattlesnake.
However.
At certain times various and sundry strong beliefs espoused by me (who else?) will ooze from my brain, travel through my fingers, and leak into the posts found here.
If the result of said mental osmotic activity at any juncture begins to distress you, one click will take you away. Bye now! No hard feelings! Please come again soon when what we are serving up may be more to your liking. Or not. Your choice.
I am not the hoagie type. I am the prime rib and crème brûlée by candlelight type.
One final caveat ... and I fully realize this could be the proverbial deal-breaker: here we do not strive to be particularly politically correct.
"What in the sam hill has her so riled?" You quite possibly are asking yourself.
In a word ... Subway.
Not as in a form of mass urban commuter transit, but as in a place to buy sandwiches. To be more specific, as in a place where I will never again buy a sandwich (which will actually save me $0.00 annually), and where I will do my best to see that the thirty-four people on the face of the earth over which I have the remotest scintilla of influence will likewise never again purchase so much as a crumb.
I think I know what you are thinking! "Why is she worked up about Subway, of all places? She doesn't even seem like the hoagie type!"
I am so glad you brought that up! Your observations today are one hundred percent on point. I've always liked that about you! And no ... I am not the hoagie type. I am the prime rib and crème brûlée by candlelight type.
But I digress. Apologies.
The bright-ish folks at Subway, instead of sticking to cold cuts, have made it their business to categorically and remorselessly discriminate against an entire segment of American schoolchildren: the home schooled. This they did while devising the rules and regs for their no doubt somewhat popular "Every Sandwich Tells A Story" contest. Don't take my word for it! Read it for yourself here, y'all. Notice at the bottom of the entry fields as well as in the page footer, the tersely exclusionary "No home schools will be accepted."**
In case you were wondering, I did not home school a single one of our four children. All four were privately educated from K-4 through 12 (two salutatorians in there, by the way) as well as college ... three tassels turned, one to go.
I am nevertheless personally acquainted with a number of exceptional home-schooled children ... among them my older sister's brood of seven. Now, you'd have to know my sister, Kay ... she's a cross between Albert Einstein and George Patton, with a great big nurturing heart at the center of all that intelligence and grit. She is also a lady of tremendous gravitas, spirituality, and practical wisdom.
**tips hat Kay-ward, blows kiss**
So while those seven kids of hers were born with more than their fair share of grey matter, as it happens their mother worked them into a veritable lather of excellence in the academic milieu and continues to do so with her one remaining school-age child. Character-wise they're pretty sharp too.
I realize that my sister's diligence and success on the home schooling front may not be the norm across the board, but I think the academic bar is hoisted at least as high in most home schools as it is in most public schools. Although I am not in possession of any empirical data per se, I'm fairly sure the test scores would bear out the above assertion in just about any contest between children schooled in traditional classrooms versus those educated at home. While we're at it let's blindfold a random selection of the home-schooled children and tie half their brains behind their backs just to make it fair.
If you clicked on the link to the home page for Subway's "Every Sandwich Has A Story" contest, you didn't see this next thing I'm going to tell you about because it has been corrected. (As you might imagine there was quite the hue and cry from certain conservative camps in the face of Subway's blatant banning of home-schooled children from their writing contest ... and rightly so. I myself sent Fred DeLuca a straightforward kind of email.)
The promotional copy originally misspelled the words "united" (referring to our country as the Untied States) and "basket" (one of the prizes was apparently a Scholastic Gift bastket).
Hmmmm ... ya'll might want to utilize the handy Windows spellcheck feature for those online writing contest entry pages. At least it would have caught bastket. Or employ home-schooled people to do your writing for you. Just a helpful suggestion!
And if the Subwonks weren't comfortable giving the $5,000 worth of athletic equipment to a single home schooling family, they could have given it to a local gym or park or fitness center in that family's name. Let's get creative, people. Put your brain on.
Happily (sort of), in addition to rectifying the spelling errors that were pointed out to them, Subway has attempted to backpedal and deflect the flak they have justifiably received by publishing an "apology" which states in part: Our intention was never to make independent schooled children feel discriminated against or excluded from this specific promotion. Oh really? Could have fooled me! Let's read it again, shall we: "No home schools will be accepted."** Is that statement designed to make the independent schooled children feel included in this specific promotion?
My advice to Subway: keep churning out sandwiches and leave the mind games to those who know how to play them.
The rule has not been changed, by the way; the contest is in progress through June 30, 2008, and home schoolers are still not allowed to participate.
And now for what I like to think of as the coup de grâce ...
Does the name Evan O'Dorney mean anything to you? He's the eighth grader from Danville, California (a state in which, incidentally, lawmakers seem intent on criminalizing home schoolers), who won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2007. The winning word in a fierce and über-dramatic three-round spelling showdown between Evan and his closest competitor, Canadian Nate Gartke, was serrefine. I couldn't have spelled or defined that word ten minutes ago even if you'd told me that spelling and defining it would get me a candlelight dinner with Johnny Depp. But Evan could spell it and ... oh, hey, guess what? He's home schooled! His mother, Jennifer, is his teacher and his father is ... wait for it ... a San Francisco subway train operator.
That's what you call ironic.
See you at Quiznos! I hear they serve up a mean prime rib sub.
Jennifer
HA HA!
**Since I posted this article with the embedded link to the promotional contest entry page, Subway has seen fit to change the language excluding participation of home schoolers from "No home schools will be accepted" to "Home schools not eligible."
I guess they think that wording will somehow make the home schoolers feel less discriminated against.
Or maybe they just wanted to prove they could correctly spell a big word like eligible.
Jennifer
Reader Comments (12)
Wow, great post. One of your best I must say. That is some serious irony all tied together. I agree with you completely, Quiznos is waaaay better anyway. MMMMMM....toasty!
Toasty indeed! Waaaaaaaay better. Let's get one next time you're in town!
'Milking a rattlesnake'! ROFL! Actually there were several turns of phrase I liked in this one, it's a great post! And not politically correct, go-away-if-you-don't-like-it, and 'straightforward' emails - well, you can see why I like you so much! LOL!
Actually, yours is the second blog-rant about Subway that I've read recently. The other was on Neutron News (May 18th, if you want to read it).
Anyway. I am stunned that they thought they could get away with that without a backlash! It IS discrimination, and I'm surprised there's not a way to make them retract!
Hey Jay! I feel the same way. I cannot believe that after being taken to task and issuing the "apology" that they have not changed the rules to include home schoolers! It's a travesty. Thanks for reading!
I am very partial to homeschoolers, as I've homeschooled my own two kids. This reeks of discrimination, and I'm surprised no action has been taken. But then again, I'm sure most homeschoolers have better things to do.
Rest assured I have never been a fan of Subway's and nor will I ever be. Amazing how small minds think...or don't.
Ain't it the truth, Keli? You can get a much better sandwich (better everything) at Firehouse or Quiznos or Blimpie or Jersey Mike's, if you like that kind of thing (TG loves subs) ... and you're probably right that the home schooled kids don't need the contest, but I think the contest needs them! It's so wrong to leave them out. Subway's lost my business forever (such as it was)!
I'm with you. I don't see how they get away with doing that. It's amazing to me that such an outcry hasn't at least made some sort of impact with them. I'll tell you this much - I was homeschooled from 1st through 9th grade. People have really strong negative opinions on it sometimes - until a homeschooler shuts them up by proving that they can get just as good of an education at home as they can in a public/private school. For some reason people seem to assume that homeschooled kids sit around and do nothing all day - but my mom made my sister and I be at the table at 8:00, we had school until 2:00 with minor breaks here and there, we had homework, tests, papers, and she graded EVERYTHING. So...
Well, absolutely. I think that most home schoolers are schooled with discipline and are made to toe the line academically. I think Subway's discrimination is based on the fact that many (though by no means all) of homeschooling families are Christians. They would not dream of discriminating against any other segment of society, such as Muslims or African Americans, but Christians are fair game. And until they feel it in their pocketbook they will continue to discriminate against this population.
This was a great post! You write so wonderfully well--it's a pleasure to read.
You know, I was actually considering Subway for supper tonight, but now I think I'll have a frozen dinner. It will be less fattening and less discriminatory.
Well, I don't know about less fattening but it will certainly be less discriminatory! And Subway needs to learn their "lesson" ... LOL!
Thanks for the compliment, JD ... I enjoy reading you too. You make me laugh till my face hurts. In a good way!
I homeschool my daughter, so I guess it's Quiznos for me, too...or even better, my LOCAL pizza/sandwich shop.
There you go, RJ ... for true, girl. Excellent notion.