“I’d like a turkey sub with jalapenos, lettuce, cheese and mayo.”
“What kind of bread?”
“Italian please.”
My name is Jared Fogle. Right now, I am biting into a delicious submarine sandwich from Subway®, the home of the five dollar footlong. Subway® makes the best subs in the world. They have a superb recipe, blah, blah, blah. Oh, Forget this. I can’t do this anymore. I would rather have a Cousins sub any day of the week. Their bread is delectable. But, when I was losing weight, Subway® had less calories, lower prices, and was closer to my house. You’ve seen me holding up my old pair of pants on TV. You can tell it worked quite nicely. So naturally, that’s the restaurant that I got a huge contract with to be their mascot. But hey, I get free subs for life at Subway®.
I was strolling home with a sub a couple days ago, and I saw that an old building had been renovated and was now going to be a new mall. Why would they open a mall when there were so many little stores around San Antonio that provided the essentials? That poor mall was going to bite the dust, I thought.


A Week and Five Subway® Subs Later


Two more malls opened in San Antonio, one on the East side and one on the South side. The original mall was doing fine with great sales. The owner, Big Bucks Johnson, was featured in an article in San Antonio’s paper. I picked up a paper, and started to read; “…Big Bucks Johnson is taking San Antonio by storm. His malls alone have matched the sales of the small businesses around San Antonio. Sales are growing even more…”
I dropped the paper. This was turning into the small business vs. big corporation cliché, and fast. It had to be stopped. And there was only one way to do that. I had to go undercover, after I got a Zesty Italian from Subway®.


Three Months and One Brilliant Plan Later


The brand new opening of a Subway® (Aren’t you sick of the registered sign?) in the food court was unveiled. I was appointed the new food supervisor of the whole food court. My plan was in action. I snuck over to the Panda Express kitchen and placed a large amount of baking powder in their eggroll mix. I poured turpentine in McDonald’s french fry oil, and dripped rat poison in Cold Stone Creamery’s flavor of the day mix. Two days from now, the health inspector would arrive at the new mall. I could see him taking a sample…





Two Days Later


He strode in, brief case in hand. His leather soled shoes squeaked on the polished linoleum. He was intimidating to everyone in the food business, except me. He was the sword to which I would chop this mall down with. Everything seemed perfectly in place on the outside. After the inspection of the food court, he rushed out of the last restaurant with a look of horror on his face. Like lightning, he whipped out his phone to call the board of health. Almost begging, he asked, “I need a warrant to close down the Big Bucks Mall of San Antonio…” The workers all gasped. Right here, right in front them, they were all going to be laid off. I felt a massive amount of guilt, but knew it was for a good cause. Twenty-four hours later, the original Big Bucks mall was closed for good. One down, two to go.





Four Days Later


Big Bucks strategically cried some crocodiles tears in front of about 15,000 people on live television. That sickened me. Trying to suck up to the people of San Antonio. What a slime ball. However, after the recent loss, I had been placed in a different mall; as a janitor. Come on, What would I do as a janitor? Clean up Big Bucks’ act? I mean, I only have access to the whole building, at night , when no one is around…this could work out just fine.


Three Weeks and One Demotion Later


I crept into the mall’s pitch black basement. It was after hours, and the people closing their stores would be doing that in about 10 minutes. I slithered up to the circuit breaker. It was on the far side of the room, in a mess of jumbled wires. I flicked out all of the switches, turning the power off everywhere. People were panicking. None of them saved their totals for the day on the register, and corporate would assume they made nothing. Then, they would have to close down the whole mall because it clearly wasn’t making any sales. I did a small dance of joy in the dark before switching the lights back on.







Two Long Years Later




Well, the Big Bucks malls are now closed. It turns out that those totals save automatically after closing time. My plan didn’t do anything but force Big Bucks Johnson to hire an electrician. However, after opening twelve more malls, it was discovered his buildings were not up to code, he had falsified property taxes, he was underpaying workers, and was using the malls as a front for an illegal gambling operation (there’s another cliché for you).The small businesses of San Antonio and I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, another big business guy came in and made a bunch of completely legitimate malls. The small businesses of San Antonio are suffering horribly. Oh, well. You can’t win ‘em all.