Knee Jerk

So I decided to use 75 points that I accumulated on my trusty Subway Card today for a steak and cheese sub. I really like Subway’s steak and cheese sub, especially with lots of Chipotle Southwest sauce.

Since I frequent this Subway establishment often, I noticed that there were two new employees on the line. Both were female, no older than 20. One was a sandwich artist, and the other was working the register. This caused the line to be a little longer than usual. The other staff on the line were doing what they needed to ensure proper training of new staff and adequate advancement of the customer line.

There were three people ahead of me. In order, there was one average joe (named for the purposes of this story “Joe Construction”), a heavier average joe, and some old lady. The first two guys look fresh off of a construction site. The old lady looked like an old lady.

As I made my way up to the front of the line, I explained to the new cashier that I had accumulated enough points on my Subway card to merit a free steak and cheese sub. She called her manager over to make sure she was utilizing the computer system properly. While I was waiting for that, I saw, in the corner of my eye, Joe Construction rubbing his knee rather rigorously. It was really something that nobody should have noticed.

I made nothing of it, because I wanted to make sure that my $6.25 sandwich was indeed free. After the transaction was successfully completed, I made my way to the soda fountain. The heavier guy was just walking away from the fountain, and I heard him say, “what’s wrong?” to Joe Construction, who was still rubbing his knee but also moaning at this point.

By this point, I was capping my soda and ready to walk over to a table to sit down and eat. Joe Construction whines out, “I just hit my f*cking knee!” So at this point, the scene was set. I was going to try to eat my lunch while taking in this situation. So I started tweeting about it.

“This guy at Subway just hit his leg on a bar under a table and couldn’t have made a bigger deal about it”

This caused @kevinmarshall, co-host of the MANville podcast, @metalfrog, and @hockeyjoepht to converse with me regarding this situation.

So here I was, eating, tweeting, and watching Joe Construction writhe in pain. Because of the combination of new staff, me throwing a wrench into the payment process, and the staff distracted by Joe Construction making a scene, the line was out the door, making it difficult for me to catch a good look at what was going on with Joe Construction, because I was on the other side of the line.

As people progressed on the line, I was able to catch small glimpses. As a result, the details of the situation start materializing to me. This guy decided to sit at the one table that has pull out chairs; every other low table is booth-style. In fact, even the other side of this same table is booth-style.

Here’s a picture of the table, sans Joe Construction but with another guy who looks like Francis Ford Coppola:

What I noticed that was really weird was that, on both knees, this man was wearing kneepads. And I’m not talking about the one like Stone Cold Steve Austin wears which looks like it’s a replacement for having a knee. I’m talking about protective knee pads that you would wear if you were either a skateboarder or a construction worker. My guess is that this was part of his work uniform and that his knees must take some abuse in his chosen profession.

Even after I realize this, he was carrying on about hitting his knee. “Ohh my God.” “I can’t believe how much this hurts.” “None of the other tables have a bar.” “OWWW.” “Jesus.” “You would be doing the same thing if you hurt yourself like this.” And so on…

So all of that leads to three possible conclusions:

1. Joe Construction really swung his knee hard into that bar to the point where it overrode the protective usefulness of the kneepads.
2. Kneepads don’t really protect you from anything.
3. Joe Construction is just a big pu$$y.

Interactive time: What do you people think?