Subway says "No" to Homeschoolers for their "Every sandwich tells a story contest." The following quote is from their contest website, "No home schools will be accepted."
The following story was sent to Subway.
The smell of fresh baked bread coming from the store was so good that…
I had to ask Mommy and Daddy to go in and look around. Baby brother smiled as he saw the fresh toppings piled high on the bread.
I thought I'd practice reading. Being only three years old, this would not be possible in public school, but my parents homeschool me because they love me so much. I've been reading for almost a year now!
Daddy suggested I read this sign about a special contest for children who love to write. It was fun to read, and I couldn't wait to enter! I'm a good writer no matter what, crayons OR markers!
But then mommy made me cry. She told me I couldn't enter because homeschoolers were not allowed. I didn't know why Subway was so mean, until I remembered that most public schooled kids don't write half as well as me.
I cried and cried, and asked Daddy if we could leave. He said "Certainly. Not only will we never visit a mean old Subway store again, we'll organize a B-O-Y-C-O-T-T of Subway stores by all your homeschooling friends!"
I sure hope Subway changes their silly policy so Mommy and Daddy can take me back for more sandwiches.
37 comments:
As a homeschool advocate and tutor, I think Subway is afraid that homeschoolers will outclass the competition.
Imagine you are someone who one day is called to a meeting to think and discuss with a group of other people to promote the Subway franchise brand of products. Your group then settles on a writing contest ... and someone suddenly chimes in with the thought to disallow home schoolers. How and why did the thought even enter the mind much less pass approval with a group of people to consider such a thing?
Weird to consider what actually goes on behind closed doors.
Homeschoolers are prominent at spelling bees and writing contests. They usually dominate.
TO: SUBWAY®
Doctor's Associates Inc.
Scholastic Inc.,
RE: EVERY SANDWICH TELLS A STORY CONTEST OFFICIAL RULES
Does Rule 2 [below] mean that Doctor's Associates Inc. and SUBWAY® and Scholastic Inc. believe that ‘home schooled’ persons are second class citizens? Home schooled students are not welcome to participate in your contest. Should they also consider themselves and their families not welcome at Subway stores?
“2. ELIGIBILITY. Contest is open only to legal residents of the United States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted. Employees and members of their families of Scholastic and Subway, their parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates, and their advertising, promotion and production agencies are not eligible to enter. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.”
[emphasis mine]
Contest Rules
Contest Sponsors:
Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012
SFAFT, 488 Wheelers Farms Road, Milford, CT 06461
Subway Contact Info
Subway Franchise Headquarters
325 Bic Drive
Milford, CT 06461-3059
PH: 203-877-4281
800-888-4848
Doctor's Assoc. contact
Doctor's Associates Inc.
325 Bic Dr.
Milford, CT 06460 CT
Tel. 203-877-4281
Toll Free 800-888-4848
Fax 203-876-6674
Officers:
President: Frederick A. (Fred) DeLuca
VP Operations: Millie Shinn
Controller: David Worroll
Doctor's Assoc. googled
I think Michelle Malkin and others are blaming Subway (and surely their legal dept wrote the rules...), but I think the real white elephant in the room is the Scholastic Corp.
They are completely in bed with the DoEd... When it comes time to present a fair and balanced look at anything this group is the one responsible for pushing the MOST liberal views on the children of this country.
They are sending packets home telling kids that their parents are responsible for killing the planet for using regular light bulbs instead of CFL's. That by driving one extra trip will kill all the polar bears.
Something needs to be done to win the media war against the liberals in this country.
Subway has lately been doing nothing but missteps. They're relegating themselves to a sub-fast food chain with exceptionally poor PR.
If you've noticed their "fresh" campaign, they've done a good job confusing freshness with healthiness. We noticed they had gotten rid of the low-carb wrap with one that has 58 carbs - about the highest you can find. They've gone from healthy to junk and are following the path Ruby Tuesday has taken to financial difficulty.
It's apparent that they've forgotten their customer. They're pulling a McCain, desiring the dollars of the fat-food burger eaters and abandoning the smaller but loyal segment of healthier eaters. But people that want junk food don't want subway - junk-lite isn't good enough. Just as McCain can't fool a Democrat into thinking he'll give them enough goodies for their parasitic fix, someone who wants a double bacon cheeseburger and large fries won't settle for a bacon sandwich.
Subway's menu is about as unhealthy as you can make "fresh" sandwich food, and the quality of meat has gone downhill. It's apparent the franchise management has serious leadership difficulties.
Wow.
My children are young but the more I hear of things like this the more I am ready to homeschool. :)
"Snubway Doesn't Want Homeschoolers"
Still boycott their products/stores, BUT ...
I wonder what would happen if HEAPS of homeschoolers, under the 'school' of their local support group, submitted entries anyway.
hehe!
"Snubway Doesn't Want Homeschoolers"
Still boycott their products/stores? BUT ...
I wonder what would happen if HEAPS of homeschoolers, under the 'school' of their local support group, submitted entries anyway.
hehe!
PS: Read this letter from Scholastic : http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29479&highlight=subway
While I agree that Subway is OUT to LUNCH on this new contest policy, and out of touch with its loyal constituents, do we need to be caustic in our response to this company? We can say much with a direct and respectful boycott letter to Subway without mirroring their bad attitude. The 3-yr old's 'story' is just an example of nastiness IMHO.
Boycott-active mom in IN who wants to play according to OUR terms,not theirs,
KB
I think it was when the prize was discussed and chosen that the exclusion of home schoolers must have occurred. Subway wanted a writing contest so any child could possibly enter, but then wanted to not reward individual achievement by giving a prize to the school. It's like if one child gets an A grade the entire class is given an A grade! So, in their limited vision they naturally excluded home schoolers from receiving the big prize. Wrong to exclude but it was the predictable result of the constant liberal mantra that individuals work for the state.
This is an outrage. Here is the phone number >and address of Subway Corporation:
Subway Franchise Headquarters 325 Bic Drive Milford, CT 06461-3059 800 888-4848
Let them know that they may allow discrimination in the "Untied States" but not the United States.
Kathy,
"Caustic" responses are often the best way to express the degree of dissatisfaction with the company's actions. Pleasant, half-baked responses are readily dismissed.
We had originally planned to write a conventional email but could not easily find the correct place to email such a complaint. This in itself seemed indicative of their lack of interest in customer feedback.
In contrast, we KNEW that someone at Subway would read our "entry". An imperfect letter that someone reads is inarguably more effective than a "direct and respectful" letter that they ignore.
Jim Peschke
We are on a homeschooling mailing list. We had sent the story in our post to the mailing list and someone said the following.
""Be careful making a statement like "...but my parents homeschool me because they love me so much." Many people love their kids just as much as homeschoolers do but still don't homeschool...""
To that we responded with the following....
The "story" was written from the perspective of our three year-old daughter. If you ask her why we're choosing to homeschool, this is a very likely response. There is nothing in her story to state or even suggest that non-homeschooling parents don't love their children, or love them any less. In fact it is a false dilemma to say that was what was being implied.
We are keenly aware that many parents simply cannot homeschool even if they want to. As a matter of fact, one of the cornerstones of our organization is that ALL parents should have school choice. Our present government monopoly education system robs parents of making better choices for their children, homeschool included.
The sad truth is, too many parents who do love their children are forcibly prevented from expressing this through school choice, whether that be private, homeschool, or even public school in another district.
http://www.petitiononline.com/home777/petition.html
Site for the online petition to boycott Subway.
This is my first trip here and I am pasting in my comments to Mr. Baggett who wrote the story for WorldNetDaily and mentioned this blog.
I see other comments that I may try to comment on later
Mr. Baggett:
Just finished reading your report. I do not patronize Subway so I cannot boycott Subway but where does Scholastic come into the picture? Quite a few years back when I sailed Merchant Marine part time with Sabine Towing of Port Arthur, Texas becaused it was non union and I could sail relief when one of their regular firemen or oiler needed a vacation. It worked fine for both of us.
During this time I was on the SS Colorado with a load of fuel from Texas to Bayonne, New Jersey. While discharging I went to the Scholastic Office in the
Empire State building to offer a childrens story I had written and illustrated. Scholastic was not interested and told me I had to restrict my vocabulary to their chosen list of words that could not produce a good story. They have also been a major supplier of text books to the failed school system and those text books contain many problems. This is quite deliberate. So what does Subway have to do with Scholastic. Which one came up with the idea? I would look for Scholastic to be very much involved and it would be consistant with what I know of them.
> Problem solved – good will all around. Too bad that it didn't play out that way.
It may turn our to be a good thing it turns out this way. Maybe it will throw more light on the problem and we will have the better vision to deal with it. Check out that relationship.
whit350
Hans, I agree with you. One of the worst missteps is when they started using the Family Guy as an advertising gimmick. Anyone who has seen this repulsive, obscene cartoon will be equally repulsed by any endorsements from the Family Guy. Eeeew.
1) I'm a home educator and advocate who believes that this has gone way beyond tempest/teapot or mountain/molehill ridiculousness.
2) Your 3-year-old daughter writes fairly well but needs some help on her grammar. The sentence that starts off "I didn't know why Subway was so mean..." should end in "I." Still, not too shabby for a toddler.
You all need to get over yourselves.
http://www.subwayfreshbuzz.com/kids/contest.aspx
The winning prize is for the school. Subway will not be giving any of you $5,000 worth of equipment. Several of you are making negative statements in regards to the direction Subway has taken lately, yet Subway will be donating a lot of equipment to a school, and I'm sure we all know how much of an issue obesity is in children these days.
If anything, a happy medium could of been reached had home-schooled children been allowed to have a category of their own. But oh well, that is life. The only thing you home-schooling parents are missing out on are 20 foot long subs and a gift basket. Is it really worth it to make such a big fuss over this petty contest?
Dylan,
I think you fail to realize that homeschoolers are not antisocial. We just do not sit around our homes with our noses in our books. We have a homeschool group that meets at a local recreation center. If we won we would donate the prize to our local recreation center for all homeschoolers to use or we would donate the equipment to our local school,
Cathy
If this is the big problem that hsers have to worry about, I'd say we're in pretty good shape.
Someone wake me when there is an actual problem.
Nance
Cathy,
I'm not sure how my comments could of been interpreted as insinuating that home-schooled children are anti-social. My apologies if I seemed to have come across that way.
As far as your proposition to donate the equipment to your recreation center, I think it's a great idea, and would help your community a lot. Unfortunately, not all parents who home school (Yes, it's two words; all but two people have made that mistake on this page) their children are in the same situation as your are, nor would they be as generous as you.
In light of your suggestion, perhaps Subway should allow home schooled children to enter the contest, under the condition that the equipment be donated to the local school.
The following was sent to us by a Subway franchise owner.
First of all, let me say that I totally agree with you on the stance Subway took on this contest. I , as most franchisees, was unaware of the contest. Franchisees do not make any decisions on what the corporate offices decide to do as a national entity. I support homeschooling 100% and fully intend, GOD willing, to teach my grandchildren in the home. I believe it is time to get our children OUT of public schools. I had 5 stores at one time. I now own only one in Tarkington, Texas.
Secondly, a boycott will only hurt the franchisee and will not affect Subway Policy at all. They get their royalty no matter what!! I work extremely long hours and I am 58 years old. I am far removed from the corporate office in Milford, CT. I can tell you I fully intend to make my displeasure known to them via e-mail today and tomorrow via phone when the department heads will be back.
Thirdly, if you want to impact Subway, the best way is to contact them at the toll free number 1-800-888-4848 and press the 0 button to speak to the operator. You should ask who handled this contest and ask to be forwarded to their office or voice mail. TRUST ME this will get their attention. Boycotting individual stores is much like boycotting gas stations. Operators may be forced out of business but the oil companies don't feel the pain.
Call your local Subway shop to speak with THE OWNER. Let them know (politely) that you could let this type of exclusion prejudice your choice of where you spend your food dollar and ask THEM to contact corporate to protest their choosing to do these types of contests- unless they are open to all students. This is the way to effectively counter this type of discrimination.
I personally support local schools, Boy Scouts, local churches, and homeschoolers. I am not the only Subway franchisee who does. Consider those of us who are with you!!
Sincerely,
A Subway Franchise Owner.
Nance,
It is not a problem it is a symptom of the problem which is to try to marginalize homeschoolers.
Cathy
Dylan,
Not to nit-pick, but homeschool is a legitimate single-word noun. It is used frequently to refer to the facilities, curriculum, and technique to deliver an education within a person's residence without adherence to the cookie cutter norms of institutionalized education.
I take exception to your suggestion that many homeschooling parents would not donate such winnings to an appropriate gymnasium or recreation center.
It is not a matter of generosity, but of practicality. Many homeschoolers make use of such facilities and would maximize their personal benefit by donating said equipment.
Perhaps Subway's marketing group believed the ridiculous "loner" stereotype frequently assigned to homeschoolers and mistakenly concluded that such a prize was inappropriate.
Scholastic is controlled children's media and responsible for the communist agenda in our schools today. To HELL with Scholastic.. This is why they shun homeschoolers. I am NOT surprised!
Also, many of you are missing the point. I am POSITIVE Jim and Cathy are not looking for money. I am positive they just want their child to be included. And I know Scholastic is the bad guy here, not the store owners. And yes this is a symptom of a bigger problem -- who controls our schools. I am currently on a crusade and radio tour against these people. They are trying to put homeschoolers in a bad light.
They don't want people to see that parents are better teachers because the state wishes to grab your child from the age of 3 and doesn't want anything to get in the way of that.
- 35 year teacher
Some of you are also forgetting that public schools generally already HAVE sports equipment, AND they get money from the government (actually from OUR TAX DOLLARS), parochial and private schools get money from tuition, but where do homeschools get their equipment? If they have any, the parents pay for it, or they pay for use of equipment at the local Y, public pool, etc., IN ADDITION to paying taxes for the public schools, which, in many cases, do not allow homeschoolers to use their equipment.
And Dylan, if you want to point out grammatical errors, you might want to check your own first. you said, "I'm not sure how my comments could of been interpreted..." That should have read "...my comments could HAVE been interpreted..."
It will be intertesting to see what Subway says as to why they excluded homeschoolers.There are companies that include homeschoolers in their contests or give aways-Box Tops For Education is one.
Now as a public schooler I laugh about this in one big way,from the blogs and different articles I am suprised that most homeschoolers would be upset that they are not included because many are trying to not to associate with publicschoolers.
Remember the sterotype of a homeschooler and many streotype public schoolers!!
I don't listen much to talk radio these days. I just heard about the contest on the Rush program today. I know the contest is about over but I contacted the main office and let them know If home schooled children were not welcome in their contest they were not welcome to eat their either. That left me and my 4 eating out some where else
I am afraid I must disagree. :) This is one of the silliest hooplas I have ever seen. I am embarrassed to be associated with homeschoolers at this time. Of course, not all of us feel that way about the silly contest, but cooler heads usually don't prevail. You're right...the caustic, squeaky wheels get the grease.
Keith,
I would be interested to hear what Rush said. If you could please email us at george@joltmail.com with details.
Thanks,
Cathy
Mrs. Taft,
Obviously the contest itself is not very important. What is important is that, wittingly or not, Subway marginalized homeschoolers.
If you believe (as we do) that this exclusion arose from concerns about the grand prize, it is based on a fundamentally flawed stereotype of homeschoolers.
As American Thinker (http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/subway_bans_homeschooled_kids.html) and other media outlets keenly noted, homeschoolers are under frequent attack and don't need anything to further reduce our status in society, even from a fast food chain. Neither Cathy nor I believe this was a malevolent act, but it has the same effect nonetheless.
What too many fail to realize is that the boycott has accomplished three major goals: 1) Change Scholastic's policy for "next time". 2) Made blue suits all over corporate America think twice about failing to give homeschoolers their due. 3) Brought the issue of homeschooling into the national spotlight.
When one thinks of these effects, its pretty tough to conclude that the controversy wasn't a worthy act.
We should turn the other cheek. Make an impact by Loving those that would mistreat you. I have posted a reply at justinlately.blogspot.com I ask that we as homeschoolers review what Christ said when the disciples asked him to call fire down on those that rejected them. What else did Christ teach? How about going the extra mile? Do we go the extra mile in order to show love, or do we cut off the world around us and live by the letter of the law as the Pharisees?
We received the following email and with permission from the writer we posted the email.
Cathy
Jim and Cathy Peschke,
I saw your blog and loved it. I'm a homeschooling mom of six in Idaho. I was driving past a Subway and thought their must be a better way to protest, than to send a scathing letter.
What about going in the Subway restaurant and filling out a comment card. If everyone did it, they would really see who much "we" could hurt their business.
Just a thought.
Jacqueline Wittwer
Here's the letter I gave Subway, through their customer comment form.
=================
I am writing about your recent contest, from which you specifically excluded homeschoolers.
Your statement about the ``...inadvertent limitation of our current contest...'' seems very dishonest. It is simply unbelievable that ``No home schools will be accepted.'' in rule 2 was inadvertent. That's not a typo or an oversight: that's a deliberate decision that we aren't going to be allowed to take part.
I understand that you wanted to donate money to public schools for fitness equipment. Homeschoolers support the public schools in a most unselfish fashion: through our property and other tax payments we contribute thousands of dollars per family to the public schools, from which we derive no benefit. I'm sure that homeschoolers who entered would have been pleased to choose which public school received the prize, if they won.
Since your corporation has deliberately chosen to show your disrespect and disdain for us by needlessly excluding us from this contest, my family will boycott your restaurants, and will encourage everyone we meet to boycott them, until we see in your actions some real evidence of a significant change in your attitude toward homeschoolers.
Nels Tomlinson
I am very disappointed in subway and I let them know it. We won't be back to their stores. They would have never (accidentally) excluded public or private schools.
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