Saturday, June 14, 2014

Be The Change You Want To See In The World

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me:

I go into a burrito place.  There’s a “regular” burrito and a more expensive “super” burrito.  A super burrito = a regular burrito plus cheese and sour cream and guacamole.  The menu sez that it costs the same amount to add cheese to any item as it costs to add sour cream to any item.  I order a super burrito with no cheese and extra sour cream.  They charge me an additional fee for the extra sour cream.

It’s infuriating!  Do they think I’m stupid?  Or are they just shamelessly fucking me because they know that they can, because they know that I know that every other burrito joint in town is gonna do the same goddamn thing?

And I presume that folks who order a super burrito with no sour cream and extra cheese are treated as shabbily as me.

It’s unacceptable.  It’s an affront to consumers’ intelligence and an encroachment into their purses, and there's no excuse.  Perhaps (maybe, just possibly) I could understand if the menus were to clearly state that there was an extra charge for substitutions (I’d still be pissed, but perhaps I could understand), but they rarely do (and even when they do, they never even try to explain how/why substitutions necessarily warrant an extra charge).

So I’ve decided to do something about it…introducing the Burrito Justice Forum.  The idea is to provide a space where “extra cheese, no cream” people can hook up with “extra cream, no cheese” people and save a bundle on super burritos by going to the burrito shop together and asking the burrito-maker to put one burrito’s cheese/cream into the other burrito and the other burrito’s cream/cheese into the first burrito.

If you live in or near Oakland (or if you plan to visit), simply use the comment section of this blog entry to post your name, your phone number, when you plan to be eating burritos in the Oakland area, and whether you are an “extra cheese, no cream” person or an “extra cream, no cheese” person.  Then let the market work its magic.

At the risk of turning this whole enterprise into a complicated and unmanageable mind-fuck, please feel free to post your guacamole preferences as well.

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