The Buy-One-Get-One Bowl That Almost Ended My Career

Currently an intern at a boutique investment bank in NY, and I figured I’d share one of my proudest accomplishments to date.

My associate sent me and another intern to pick up his Chipotle order. We verified his name ten different ways, grabbed the bag with the perfect matching label, and sprinted back. We knew he usually gets the Uber One buy-one-get-one combo, but Chipotle claimed there was only a single bowl today. Since he didn’t send a screenshot, we couldn’t check the contents, but everything else matched — until he opened it. Immediately he started going off about how the entire thing was wrong: wrong meat, wrong toppings, and black beans he’d rather starve than eat. He told us to go fix it and “not fuck it up again.” The other intern opted out instantly, so I took the bullet and ran back alone.

I already knew I was cooked the moment that bowl opened. My associate has a very specific facial expression and emote he does whenever one of us interns messes something up, and he hit every single one of them in under five seconds. By then it was less about food and more about my survival.

When I returned, the Chipotle staff insisted I’d already picked up the correct order. After showing them the screenshot and forcing a re-check of the Uber tickets, they realized there was another customer with the same first name and same last name initial, and the receipts only show first name + initial. The manager stepped in and immediately got annoyed, asking why my associate couldn’t “just eat it,” and said he’d only remake one bowl if I returned the wrong one — which I obviously did not have. That pushed him over the edge, and he started threatening to cut portion sizes like it was a performance review. Even though it was their mistake, he kept hinting he’d short every ingredient just to avoid giving me the extra bowl. At one point it genuinely felt like he wanted to kill me over someone else’s burrito bowl.

Eventually, after way too much negotiation for something that cost $12.95, he remade both bowls correctly. I sprinted back to the office again and handed the food to my associate mid-call like nothing happened, despite basically getting cooked by my team and Chipotle for an hour straight.

For the record, my associate still ate all three bowls — including the wrong one.

6 Comments
 

TechBanking

Well, at least you can rest assured he's not going to last long eating 3 bowls a day. Quick path to a 400 lbs life once you hit 40.

I trained really hard in 2019 and would eat three bowls for a meal. I was burning a little over 35,000 calories per week doing Muay Thai, BJJ, MMA, gym training, and triathlons. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Most Helpful

If real, your associate is probably just having a rough time accepting that choosing sides at Chipotle is the closest they will ever get to the buy side

Imagine eating three Chipotle bowls at once. I wonder if they can eat four.

It would be a shame if the toilet paper runs out one morning and all the other stalls seem out of order or occupied. 

 

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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee

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