A sign at a franchise for America’s most popular sandwich chain has been removed after the Titan submersible tragedy was made light of.
On Saturday, Brooklet, Georgia resident Timothy Mauck posted a photo which has since gone viral. Pictured, the sign outside a Subway sandwich shop in nearby Rincon, Georgia, reads: “Our subs don’t implode.”
The sign references the five people who died aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible after it imploded tens of thousands of feet below the water’s surface.
The sub was on a voyage to view the wreckage of the Titanic before losing contact with those above the water on June 18 and was missing for four days. After the wreckage of the submersible was found, the US Coast Guard confirmed the deaths of the five passengers on June 22, saying the debris found was consistent with a “catastrophic implosion.”
The reaction to the image has mostly ranged from outright disbelief to anger.
“That’s wrong,” commented one Facebook user.
“This is tacky to say the least. In Rincon, GA. Be better Subway”, someone else tweeted.
“@SUBWAY this is at their store in Rincon, GA. It’s not just disgusting, it’s just sad. do better,” tweeted another person.
When contacted for comment, Subway confirmed that it was aware of the sign and said it had spoken with the franchise about it.
“We have been in contact with the franchise on this matter and have made it clear that these types of comments have no place in our business,” a Subway spokesperson told TODAY.com. “The sign has since been removed.”
A follow-up post from Mauck confirms this: In one image, he posted on july 2the same Metro sign now appears in white.
Mauck says he took the photo because he found the sign to be shockingly disrespectful.
“I’m sure it would be disrespectful to the family, you know what I mean?” Mauck said. “It was a very out of character type of thing because that’s a place of business, and for one of his employees to put that on his sign that just lets everyone know that the situation is a joke.”
Mauck says that even though the signal took him by surprise, “I didn’t expect it to go this far.”
Although Mauck doesn’t see the humor in it, the tragedy of the Titan submersible has inspired the internet to create a huge collection of “eat the rich”-style jokes and memes about the fate of the wealthy passengers, who paid $250,000 each. to take his ill-fated journey.
“I actually stopped on the highway just to take a picture of it,” Mauck says, adding that he couldn’t get it out of his mind. “I’ve told a lot of people, ‘You know, if it was your family, whether it was a situation like that or if it was just another tragic accident, and people made fun of them, it wouldn’t be as fun. for you, would you man?’”
