My Cookie Scam Secret

by Heather Sundell

I was fortunate enough to experience collegiate life, which means I have lived the seedy underground lifestyle in which Subway is an actual food group. Sandwiches day or night can be life sustaining, even critical in the more dire of hours. That said, no (wo)man can live on foot-longs alone; they require accoutrements like a medium soda, a bag of Fritos, or even two M&M cookies.

This is why the “Meal” was invented. But nay, I never ordered the meal because I got my cookies for FREE.

As a twenty-one year old sorority girl, what I lacked in finances, I made up for in bubbliness…and let’s face it, boobs. I used both of these things to my advantage at the local Subway to weasel my way into free dessert…all the time. My extreme critical eye for quality control can be attributed to the genesis of this sick little scam. On each visit to the Subway, as I made my way from the bread choice to the cashier, my eyes darted to the cookies sitting next to the register, waiting for me to make them part of my Meal. The first thing I noticed was that these cookies were always broken, like a toddler had thrown a tantrum on top of the cookie sheet.

After many food industry jobs, I knew that selling these cookies would be inappropriate, so I put on my best doe-eyed face and innocently asked, “What do you do with the broken cookies?” With no better answer besides, “Girl, we gobble up those broken bits in the back when we’re slow. Duh,” the nice young men would generously offer to just GIVE THEM TO ME. I was beyond. Scoring free warm cookies is still to this day one of the best highs I have ever experienced.

You’d think pulling this off multiple times would be impossible. I assumed they would eventually catch on or be completely immune to their daily barrage of sorority BS, which I can only assume meant a lot of no-carb nonsense. However, I made a real routine of out this cookie thievery for years. To this day, if I see the slightest crack in the doughy goodness, I turn on my greedy charm like a pro. It’s been about six years, but I still got it!

Heather Sundell lives in Los Angeles.

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