Subway: Tessellating Cheese on July 1?

Subway to Evenly Arrange Cheese, as Per Corporate Edict

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Subway Cheese Arrangement

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uploaded by Jordan Yerman

Subway will start tessellating the cheese on its sandwiches at Australian and New Zealand sandwich shops as of July 1, 2010, according to an internal memo. Tessellation is the arrangement of shapes on a plane so that there are no gaps or overlap, like a mosaic.

You know why you can slide across your parquet floor in socks without stumbling? That's right: tessellation.

Should this turn out to be a real memo, it's a fascinating glimpse into the corporate mindset, where everything everywhere must be uniform, and where nobody apparently realized that the "old way" of arranging cheese had an uneven result; or, if it was realized, nobody dared to implement the change without corporate approval.

Subway Cheese Arrangement Under Fire for Years

Aside from tessellation being the obviously even way to arrange the cheese, the triangular shape suggests that this was intended all along, but for some reason had never been part of the corporate manual.

It seems like a small change, but Subway customers have noticed for quite some time that there was room for improvement in terms of cheese layout. Left Handed Toons summed up the situation with a quick drawing.

the terminology is also interesting: presumably a professional builds a sandwich, while the rest of us, while at home, only make a sandwich.