America, Is There Anything Else I Can Help You With?

A short rant about real world enshittification, with kids.

Listen to the story, read by me. If you prefer…

The other night I was at Chipotle with the kids for dinner when a Silver Alert blared out of my cell phone. For those who don’t know, a Silver Alert is when your phone — silenced or not — goes absolutely berserk at any hour of the day because an old person is lost. We have Amber Alerts, too, for kids. It’ll be Woof Alerts next.

I have no idea what I’m meant to do with the Alert information. It only serves to scare the crap out of me every single time it goes off, bringing me even closer to the Silver person on our march toward the grave.

The kids and I were doing the usual thing at the time, messily eating messy food that the staff at Chipotle had made messier by packing it into a To-Go bag. It’s telling that the staff at Chipotle always assume I must want to get myself and my family out of that place as quickly as possible. That we look like perfectly sensible people, who surely want to eat our dinner anywhere else. Even the parking lot.

You can’t blame them. It’s grim in there. Every surface has a hosedownable quality, with tables and chairs it feels like the architects added last-minute, for scale. Not that anyone would ever use them. Most people send a driver to pick up bags from an alphabetized bookshelf by the checkout, or huddle over their phones in the dark hallway. There’s even a code for the bathroom. So, you know… stay out of there, too.

It’s not that I’d never been to a Chipotle before having children. But I honestly can’t remember if I ever went to a Chipotle before having children. Eating in those days just kind of happened. You didn’t have to survey a group of small people with mushy brains about where they’d prefer to not finish a meal. You just felt hungry, went wherever you liked, had a drink, and unless someone got engaged or something, forgot all about it.

Now I’m involved in every single decision leading up to and after the intake of calories for multiple people. Will it be Chipotle? Which of the two near our house is preferred today? Is now a good time for everyone? Did anyone already have Mexican for lunch? So much of parenting is helping to broker peace.

Then you finally make it to Chipotle and thanks to the rampant enshittification of the entire real world, the meal management doesn’t end there.

I cook most of the meals in our house. Going out to dinner is meant to be a luxury. A chance for the home chef to hand it over to a professional. So why do I have to walk down a cafeteria line telling teenagers precisely what to put in a burrito? On our most recent visit, one of them made a mistake and was fully prepared to argue that it was somehow my doing. As if I’d telepathically commanded him to dump a fistful of cheese on my meal. I can only assume the exhausted look on my face engendered his pity.

In moments like these I pine for that quaint old concept of The Menu. I’m not cooking for once, so why the hell am I still deciding what goes in the food?

But the Minimum Wage Restaurant Employee Fantasy Camp experience doesn’t end there. Although your meal comes entombed in enough excess paper and foil to be heavier than the food itself, the higher-ups at Chipotle want you to know that they really are “environmentally conscious”. Hence on the way out you are presented with not one trashcan, but three. Carefully labelled with words and illustrations to alert you as to what may be disposed of where. Thus begins your final ordeal. Mess up, and the world ends.

Would you be shocked to hear that the can marked “Land Fill” is brimming at every visit? Still, the kids and I try our darnedest to complete this exam with a passing grade. We argue over what constitutes what, as if Mother Nature is right over our shoulder tut-tutting. Carefully we separate the Recyclables, Compost and Land Fill, so that one of the fed-up teens in a stained, black Chipotle t-shirt can later lob it all into the same dumpster out back.

When the Silver Alert struck the other night it’s fair to say I was at my wit’s end. I’ve already got two vulnerable citizens to worry about every day, and this part-time, reverse-paying gig at Chipotle is kind of stressful. Besides, our city council recently held a vote to increase sales taxes (again) for Police, Fire and Rescue. Aren’t they trained to track down and aid wayward seniors and such? I guess they need my help now, too.