Stretching the loaf

My longtime love affair with Subway subs is sputtering to an end, what with having a WaWa over on Joppa Rd and another coming to Perry Hall along with a Steak 'n' Shake and a carwash, over by the library.

There is so much to live for!

I think that the world began to fall apart when someone decided that a 2 x 4 did not need to be 2 inches by 4 inches. Lumber merchants call "2x4" the "nominal" size in the same way that I call a Junior Whopper a "nominal" New York strip steak.

But the people at Subway apparently saw how they shave the wood, if you will, and decided that the footlong sub they sell did not need to be a foot long.

So, a group of people filed suit against the sandwich giant, asking that they a) make the sub a full 12" or b) stop saying that it is.

I love it when people throw wrenches into the gears of crooked commerce.

Now, in a landmark decision hailed as the greatest since United States v. Nixon, in which it was ruled that Nixon was, after all, "a crook," a settlement has been reached, and Subway will have to take steps over the next four years to make certain its rolls reach a full 12 inches. potential.

In what will be a sure laugh-getter, your neighborhood Subway will have to install a "measuring device" for the bread. The amazing smell that wafts into your old olfactory comes from the bread baking in Subway shops. They get the dough in frozen logs that they bake right in front of your nose. It will be the job of the newest person on the staff, probably, to stretch the thawed loaves to be a foot in length.

Subway will have to shell out $520,000 in attorney fees, plus $500 each to the 10 people who filed the lawsuit.  The checks will be small because, as the lawyer for one of the plaintiffs said, "It was difficult to prove monetary damages, because everybody ate the evidence."

Those words will soon be chiseled in stone above the front door to the Supreme Court cafeteria.