Roy was going on a burrito run for lunch. The burrito place was across the plaza from Jackson’s Wine and Spirits in Berkeley where Roy and I both worked. He was a full-time employee raising a son with his girlfriend and I was part-time, a college student. Roy had spoken well of these burritos for the last week and his descriptions had whetted my appetite. He asked me what size I wanted.
“Extra large of course,” I said reaching into my pocket for some cash.
“You sure? They’re pretty big. I always just get the medium size. It fills me up.”
“Who you talking to, man? I want the biggest one.”
He shrugged and took my money, with a subtle expression of reprimand as if I were being foolish. He gave me this look rather often. He then departed on his burrito run and when he returned we both took our lunch break behind the wine bar.
As we unwrapped our burritos from the foil, the first thing I noticed was that his looked bigger.
“Does your burrito look bigger than mine?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I persisted. “I bought the extra large and you bought the medium. How in the hell could yours look bigger than mine? That’s bullshit, man.”
Roy looked at me warily. “Just drop it, Jeff.”
“Easy for you to say! You paid for the medium.”
“Come on, man. Let’s just eat.”
“I have my rights! I’m weighing them.”
Next to the wine bar was the deli with scales for weighing the meats and cheeses. Before Roy could protest, I snatched his burrito and the paper plate from which it rested and weighed the two burritos. Sure enough, his weighed six grams more than mine.
“I was right!” I screamed with wide eyes and triumphant self-certitude.
By this time all the other employees had been witnessing the unfolding drama and they were laughing hysterically.
Roy didn’t look amused or impressed with my weighing of the burritos. He said, “Never again, Jeff.”
“Never, what?”
“I’m never doing a burrito run for you again. Or any kind of run.”
“I have my rights,” I said again, as if that put me in the clear.
Roy never talked much, but he talked even less that night.
Looking back, I was right, technically speaking, but I behaved like an ass. Once I had sunk my teeth into the idea that I had been treated unjustly, I had lost all sense of proportion and I had created what at work had become known infamously as The Burrito Incident.
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