one cut, straight down the diagonal, done. square cut takes two passes and you drag the filling halfway out the far side on the second one. grandfather did his the same way, still do it out of habit.

> I almost filed an incident report

good. incident reports exist for a reason

> Case closed.

the case is not closed, you just stopped talking.

> Triangle-cut or i don't eat it

drawing the line at geometry is a bold way to lose lunch, but carry on

Prendergast cut his sandwiches on the diagonal too, come to think of it... said it was so he could see what was in 'em before he took a bite. Man trusted nothing he hadn't looked at first. We had a lad on the night watch who cut his square and got teased for a month...

prendergast sounds like a man who checks the back of his trousers before sitting down and honestly i respect it

saw a guy once try to do the diagonal in one pass with a serrated knife way too short for the job. sawed at it like a canoe paddle. filling ended up on his wrist. one sharp thin blade, quick, no sawing. that's the whole trick

that lad on the night watch, square-cut Ted we called him after that... to be fair to him he made a proper job of it, crusts trimmed and all, then cut four neat quarters. so the teasing wasnt even fair... course once a nickname sticks on a boat thats you for eleven months...

Square-cut Ted is exactly the kind of villain origin story i'm talking about. crusts trimmed and STILL wrong. the man missed the whole point of lunch. case remains closed, and i'm adding Ted to the file.

> once a nickname sticks on a boat thats you for eleven months

eleven months is generous. a nickname like square-cut ted is a lifetime appointment, he's 70 years old somewhere right now and somebody still calls him Ted the Quarters

square-cut Ted trimmed the crusts first which means he understood presentation and then blew the landing. you dont garnish a mistake. one pass, corner to corner, wipe the blade, eat it over the plate so nothing hits the floor. done

Ted the Quarters. perfect. i'm printing a mug for the office cupboard with that on it, right next to the chipped one. square cutting is a choice, trimming crusts is a confession. case still closed.

square-cut Ted deserved better and i mean that!! my grandma cut hers into fingers for dipping and honestly that's a separate case file entirely. remember when crusts came with those little plastic crust guards, my cousin had one shaped like a race car!

dont bring rectangles into it... we had a pastry on the boat cut into little rectangles for the officers and the rest of us got the round ones, so a man could tell his rank by his bread... Prendergast wouldve cut all of it on the diagonal anyway and dared anyone to say something

plastic crust guard shaped like a race car is a solution looking for a problem. kid presses that thing down, saws around it, and now you got a crust guard to wash for two bites of sandwich. my grandmother used a butter knife and a steady hand, that was the guard

exhibit B: officers get rectangles, enlisted get rounds. that's not a bakery, that's a class system with crumbs. i'm expanding the file to include rank-based bread and i want it known that ted the quarters would have been an officer, wrong cut and all. case closed, harder

i keep getting downvoted for perfectly good stories, somebody on here has it in for me... anyway Ted wouldnt have been an officer, an officer wouldve had someone else cut it for him. thats the real class system with crumbs Dex... we had a baker on the night watch who kept the odd end of the loaf for himself and called it dues...

lurker here, first post. my dad cut ours diagonally every single day for 20 years and i genuinely didnt know you could do it any other way until i was about 14 and saw a guy at a cafe cut a sandwich into four little squares like he was rationing it. thought something was wrong with him. sorry if thats harsh

welcome out of the shadows halfpint_ray. your dad sounds like a man with a routine and i say that with full respect. also 'thought something was wrong with him' is the harshest thing anyone has said in this thread and it's about a man slicing bread into four

halfpint_ray's dad: 20 years of correct service, no incident reports. the cafe guy: four squares like he was rationing it. exhibit C, and it goes in the file right under Ted. a wire cutter is just a square-cut with extra steps. case closed for real this time

one pass only works if the edge is actually there. thin blade, few strokes on the steel, and it glides through the crust. dull blade compresses the bread, filling squeezes out the far side, and then everyone blames the cut angle when the real problem is the edge. i run mine over the steel every couple weeks, takes thirty seconds

wire cutting ive seen done proper... a lad on a trawler used to cut his sandwiches with a length of monofilament, wrapped round both ends and pulled through, clean line nothing squashed... he did it diagonally of course, a man who goes to that trouble aint wasting it on quarters... he used to say a knife drags and a wire dont...

> case closed for real this time

this case has been closed so many times it's developing a hinge. dex's file is thicker than the original sandwich