Wordsmoker

Dear God, if you’re listening—and I have no choice but to assume that you are because seemed to have developed a distaste for dialogues over the past two millennia—I have one small favor to ask. Before you say no, it’s not something that would require a lot of work, like preventing genocide in Sudan or ending the war in Syria. Those are huge things, and as an individual pray-er? praying person? I wouldn’t expect you to just snap your fingers and save all of those lives for me. Something like that, I imagine, would require a lot of people unanimously voting to get you to step in and intervene. And it’s still a violation of your Prime Directive of non-interference, so I just don’t see it happening. This, I’m pretty sure, is easier, so here goes. Please get the kids at Chipotle to stop fucking up my burritos.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “I don’t have time to worry about the well being of your moderately priced meals, Latrigue. This is an election year.” But it’s not just for me. Chipotle makes a good product for everyone, but the jerks who are working there are going to ruin it. Lord, I know that you’re not a fan of rambling disorganized prayer, so I prepared a list of my grievances.

Running Out of Things: Look, restaurants occasionally run out of supplies. I get that. But I’m not talking about Splenda™ or lids for the salsa containers. They’re running out of key ingredients for their food, like rice or tortillas. How the fuck (pardon my French, God) am I supposed to have a tortilla-less burrito. So, the zombie behind the counter goes, “Would you like a burrito bowl instead?” No, you fuck. I’m not on a diet. I came to a burrito place to eat a goddamn burrito. True story: You may have noticed while watching me from Heaven that I’m on this “no soda” kick. Naturally, I drink a lot of tea to make up for it. Well, I’m there the other night and they’re out of BOTH KINDS OF TEA. Sweet and unsweet. I told the girl at the counter and she thanked me. Fifteen minutes later, still no tea. Do you remember seeing that? If you did, please don’t smite her, because I don’t know if it’s entirely her fault.

Being Scoop Happy: I know that if you give a moron a ladle, the moron is going to want ladle things, but that doesn’t mean that everyone wants a humongous scoop of every item—or even multiple scoops a single item. I ask for rice (when they have it), and the kid gets this big heaping spoonful of rice and dumps it on my tortilla. Okey, it’s a lot, but I burned some calories doing whatever that day, so I can deal with it as long that’s all the rice I’ll be eating for the entire day. But then he goes and scoops up another giant heaping ladleful of rice. How much is that? Like 600 calories per scoop? (Sidebar: Do you know what would be popular here on Earth? If you made calories consistent across food types. Example: A twelve-ounce steak would have the same number of calories as twelve ounces of Cherry Garcia. I’m not asking for this; I’m just throwing it out there for you in case you wanted to play around with the idea. You can take credit.)

The Salsa Person is Always a Halfwit: When I get to the part of the toppings bar where I have to talk to them about salsa, I always say the same thing in a loud, clear, and confident voice: “A little of each, please.” I like the flavor and consistency of all three of their salsas. I think that the person hears me because he or she starts spooning the mild tomato one first. Once that scoop is over, however, the salsa handler just gives me a blank stare. So I repeat, “A LITTLE OF EACH, PLEASE.” The one thing that I wouldn’t expect anyone to do in response to this is to try to shovel more of the mild, tomato-y salsa onto my burrito because there are at least eight other condiments on the counter. Apparently, however, “a little of each, please” sounds like “GIVE ENOUGH SALSA TO FILL A GREMLIN!” This is usually the same person who can’t believe that anyone would want a burrito without sour cream. The problem is, God, I hate sour cream. And that brings me to a question that I have for you. If there is so much starvation in the world, Lord, why have you caused me to discard so many burritos due to sour cream contamination? Sour cream comes at the end of the condiment line, and if even just a drop touches my burrito, I demand a new one because you just can’t get it out. But sometimes these goddamn automatons glob sour cream on my burrito before I can even answer their query. Don’t you think a starving person might just wipe the sour cream off and eat the burrito if we gave it to him or her? Well, I don’t want to be a narc here, but the Satan’s minions you have working at Chipotle are just throwing them in the garbage and starting over on a new one.

Cheese Assaults: As you know, because you decided that it was a good idea to give me some cross to bear, you made me mildly lactose intolerant. It’s not a huge deal, but I do prefer to limit my cheese intake. God, I’ve already talked a lot about excessive portions, so I want you to look at this Internet image and read my mind. Yeah, I’m pissed off.

The Guests Are Fuckwads:  Not all of them, and this may not even be your fault, but here is a small list of social faux pas that are routinely committed by the clientele:

• Crowding the drink area
• Crowding the area where you get plastic ware
• Sitting at a table after finishing eating when the restaurant is crowded
• Unpleasant odor
• Talking on the cell phone while ordering
• Leaving a mess in their dining area
• Masturbation in the restrooms (I suspect)
• Talking about things that don’t interest me
• Venereal diseases (Please take care of this in general—not just at Chipotle)

Understand that I’m not blaming Chipotle for the quality of their customers. That’s why divine intervention is so crucial in this area, but I’m sure you get that, don’t you?

I want to be very clear on something: if it’s going to come down to you doing this Chipotle thing or saving children from a terrorist attack or famine, then I’m definitely Team Famine. But if you’re going to allow those terrible things to happen anyway—and I think that we can all agree that they’re just awful—please address the valid complaints that I have listed about this potentially extraordinary restaurant chain. Chipotle has an excellent product; together I believe that we can turn it into one of the great stories in the food service industry.

Sincerely,

Chillbear Latrigue

P.S. You can’t be all that impressed with what’s going on with Chick Fil A, right? I don’t want to put you on the spot, but maybe you should visit a plague of locusts on Dan Cathy’s house to suggest to him that he should just worry about selling chicken. Free advice.