Today Subway, the world’s fastest growing lunchmeat sandwich company, joined the sad but worldwide fraternity of restaurants whose only membership requirement is the awesome specter of a PR fiasco.

Mainstream news outlets reported an alleged Australian Facebook vandal sharing an incriminating photo of a “footlong” Subway sandwich next to a ruler measuring its length at a mere eleven inches. These same news outlets failed to ask the bigger question in my mind: shouldn’t a continent that primarily uses the metric system be offering “meterlong” sandwiches? I’d consider moving there.

Subway fans were appalled at this covert product reduction that the company allegedly perpetrated right under their noses. All those paid-for inches of fast food, withheld from countless sandwiches sold in good faith, were clearly a misdeed committed by greedy corporate one-percenters. Millions of enraged citizens responded by driving like mad to the Subway next door to their house, buying a footlong, measuring it, Instagramming the results with an indignant caption, and eating it anyway.

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