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Food

A Subway Sandwich Artist Got Caught Electrocuting Flies Directly Over Food

With every subsequent bug-zapping sound, it becomes increasingly apparent to the author and viewers of the video that the electrocuted flies are, in all likelihood, falling into the sandwich toppings below.

Subway's army of sandwich artists is on the front lines of the battle to Eat Fresh™, making sure that every customer gets the exactly what they want on their 11-inch "footlong."

But one Subway location in Indianapolis had more than discriminating clients to deal with this week, after a video emerged on Facebook of an employee hunting for flies with an electric tennis-racket-style fly swatter directly over his sandwich artist colour wheel.

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With every subsequent bug-zapping sound, it becomes increasingly apparent to the author and viewers of the video that the electrocuted flies are, in all likelihood, falling into the sandwich toppings below.

READ MORE: Monday Was a Really Shitty Day for Subway

The "zzzzt" sound of the zapper is unappetising enough on its own, but to eat a sandwich prepared in the very same assembly area was downright disturbing to Justin Clemons, who decided to film the food safety nightmare unfolding before him. "Subway should be embarrassed," Clemons wrote on the original Facebook post, which has since gone viral, adding, "I will never eat there again."

Also, how many flies can a restaurant have that it would require the purchase of a tennis-racket-style fly swat in the first place?

Needless to say, the video immediately caught the eye of local food safety officials. "We uniformly agreed this was a poor practice," Johnson County Health Department Director of Environmental Health John Bonsett told local news outlet Fox59. "Because the method of hitting the bugs in a food service area isn't good, because we don't know where they are going to land or what will happen to the bug parts."

Subway's presumably hardened PR team issued the following statement in response to the incident and reached out to Clemons personally via Facebook. "Food safety is our top priority. All Subway restaurants are individually owned and operated. As soon as the restaurant owner was made aware of the situation, he immediately took action by closing his restaurant and discarding all open products. He has contracted a professional cleaning service to ensure that the restaurant is in top working order."

But this is hardly the worst thing to happen in a Subway restaurant. The embattled sandwich chain was thrust into national headlines in October when a naked woman who had smoked too much spice ransacked an Alaska location. Then, a white supremacist with Aryan Pride and Donald Duck tattoos took a hostage in a Oregon Subway the same day that a sandwich artist drugged a police officer with THC and meth in Utah.

Nor is this the most recent potential bug-eating incident to emerge from a fast food chain. This week, a woman took to Twitter to share the horror of having eaten half a bag of chips covered in ants, thinking that they were "seasoning." In all fairness, no one eating at a Pita Pit should ever have to ask themselves whether they are eating pepper or ants.

never go to pita pit ever OMFG literal dead ants all over my chips and I thought it was seasoning so I ate them pic.twitter.com/hOjfH5RPZE

— Emily Wagoner (@eWags10) September 13, 2016

We're no nutrition experts, but at least flies and ants are made of organic matter, unlike the yoga mat chemicals that have been found inside the sandwich giant's loaves. Even noma serves ants.