Chipotlooting

Tip it in the bud: If you accidentally drop something in a tip jar, let it go,
'cause man, it's gone.

I recently found myself in Chipotle, which is about as newsworthy as an alert that I am sitting on the toilet (an alert often preceding a trip to Chipotle).

Chipotle addresses head-on what Taco Bell does not: it's all the same ingredients gussied up and rearranged as if it were something wholly new. For Taco Bell it's a point of embarrassment, for Chipotle, it's a business model.

I like the guys behind the counter, more specifically, the visible food preparers mixing up my chorizo and barbicoa. I've never been to a Chipotle that did not have employees of Latin decent preparing my food. This is important to me. I still say the worst Chinese food I've ever had was prepared by what looked like a gaggle of Irish women in Gloucester, Mass. This shouldn't have surprised me, the Irish suffered a famine because they only liked potatoes, why would they know how I prefer my shrimp fried rice? So when I see genuine latinos and latinas, it reminds me just how smart McDonald's Corp is.

Ask yourself: would you rather eat a burrito that I prepared for you, or someone native to the burrito culture?

Is it okay to say burrito culture?

Hopefully I've established that I'm more appreciative of Chipotle and all it's employees than I probably should be for a high-end fast food joint. My appreciation was turned in on itself and used as an ironic dagger to my soul.

I ordered a quadruple shot of corn tacos (expertly prepared by my seemingly authentic food staff), scooted down the high school lunch line, squared up in front of the cashier and crescendoed by paying for my meal with a $10 bill. The cashier handed back a single, a few coins and my receipt all in one fistful. This transaction was like a precarious drawbridge swinging over the tip jar moat. I'm in the habit of dropping whatever change I'm given into tip jars, just as much for my own convenience as it is alms to the restaurant staff. Like usual, I dropped the coins into the tip jar, but I also accidentally dropped the receipt. I reached in the tip jar to pull it out. The tip jar is not a trash can and because I fully intended to throw my receipt in the trash, it didn't seem right for me to leave my soon-to-be trash in their tip jar.

I looked up at the cashier as I was fishing for my receipt and something struck me as funny. The look on her face seemed confused and perhaps angry. I did what most people confused about a situation would do to coax out more information, I smiled. Nervously.

"Uh-uh. What are you doing?" the cashier asked.

Still confused. Still gripping the single in my fist. Still fishing for the receipt, I finally got it and showed it to the cashier.

"I dropped this," I said.

"That's for tips," she said. "Put that back."

Ohhh. Okay. I understood.

This was not the first time I've had change trouble in a food establishment and I didn't want to create another scene.

The cashier saw the single in my hand, probably paid as little attention to me as I did to her, not realizing she had just handed me the single and saw what she thought was me taking money out of the tip jar.

"You just gave me this dollar," I said. "I dropped my receipt and I was just fishing it out."

A problem flashed across my brain. I was admitting that I was not stealing a dollar from the tip jar, but I was also admitting that I hadn't put a dollar in the tip jar. I wasn't sure the total of the coins I tossed in there and feared it was three cents or something. I glanced at the receipt. It was 18 cents. My defense was crumbling.

Eighteen cents is not a good tip.

In my mind, I was agitated because I felt guilty. But for what? I hadn't stolen anything. I didn't even believe the Chipotle staff deserved tips, if I may be so honest. They get paid a higher hourly wage than waiters, they get paid a wage comparable to Burger King and Arby's and those employees didn't garner tips. It feels like I'm tipping whoever had the idea to put out a tip jar. Existence does not equal justification. Now I felt vilified and I didn't deserve it.

The only way I was going to get out of this pickle was if I specifically explained that I got $1.18 back in change, dropped the coins and kept the dollar because I hate pennies and like bills.

I also couldn't just drop the dollar in the tip jar because that's an admittance that I was, in fact, wrong. The cashier would be more angry if I put the dollar back. It's bad to be robbed, but worse to catch the thief. There was no sense spending a dollar I didn't think Chipotle deserved in the first place, just so the cashier could hate me more.

People were staring now, more at the cashier than me, but also me. I was blushing. I wondered if blushing equated to guilt. The guy who mixed the chorizo with the rice had come over, not to mediate, but to gawk.

I made the decision that I would not drop my single into the tip jar. Never say no if in a hostage negotiation and never apologize to a significant other if it's insincere. In volatile situations, it's best to stay neutral.

"I don't know what to tell you. I took nothing out of the jar except the receipt I dropped," I said.

The cashier smacked her lips and dramatically turned her attention to the customer after me. She was physically gesticulating that she was done with me. If this were 1993, she would have demanded that I "talk to the hand." If this were my sister, she would have rolled her eyes and said "whatever."

But the cashier did neither. Her manner of revenge was to ignore me, to leave me alone to the enjoyment of my tacos.

The tacos were good, but the taste in my mouth was bad and I haven't been back to Chipotle since...


...Saturday.

And then again on Sunday.