Enchilada Ed

7.

 "What does Chipotle have that we don't?" With a yardstick, Piruz slapped a picture of the Chipotle logo that he had taped to the green board in the backroom of El Gringo's.  

"The norovirus? Ayyyye, amirite?" Ivan, El Gringo's beefy chef, punched Ed's arm probably harder than he had realized.

Ed forced a smile and massaged his upper arm. He just wanted to go home. He hadn't known that Piruz was going to call an "after-hours new initiative implementation staff meeting." It was ten-thirty on a Friday night. Ed's shift had ended exactly forty minutes ago. He was now about fifteen minutes from being over-parked. Ed thought it was a lucky thing that he had accidentally fed the meter a couple extra quarters that afternoon. Serendipity is what his dad would call it. Still, Piruz had made Ed and Ivan wait in the backroom for half-an hour before he even began this "after-hours new initiative implementation staff meeting." If it carried on for very long, and Ed was beginning to think that it would, his earlier serendipity wouldn't do him any good after all.

"This is serious!" the slap of Piruz's yardstick against the green board jolted Ed back to attention, "What does Chipotle have that we don't?"

"Multi-billion dollar assets and thousands of nationwide franchises?" Ivan scratched his balding head.

"The youth! Chipotle has the youth!"

"That too, I guess." Ivan laughed.

"But we have something that places like Chipotle or Qdoba don't anticipate," Piruz continued. "Do you know what that is?"

"A nimble corporate strategy!" Ivan clapped.

"We have special insight into the coveted thirteen-to-eighteen demographic." Piruz gently brought his yardstick down on Ed's left shoulder, "We have a youth."

"Uh, Piruz-" Ed stared at the yardstick as if it were a poisonous spider crawling toward his neck.

"Pedro!" Piruz barked, "Authenticity, remember!"

"Okay, Pedro-"

"You've eaten at Chipotle and Qdoba," Piruz interrupted. "You know their weaknesses."

Ed thought about all the burritos on which he had spent his birthday money.

"There's some things I would change about them, in a perfect world, but overall -realistically- I'm a fan."

"You're easily manipulated by the media, aren't you, my little hormonal friend?" Piruz now caressed Ed's left cheek with the yardstick, "Your adolescent mind is undeveloped and weak. You have yet to create adult neuropathways."

"That's rude." Ed swatted the yardstick away from his face.

"That's wonderful!" Piruz beamed, "I knew when I hired you it was a stroke of genius. My money senses were downright tingling."

"That sounds like an HR violation," Ivan pounded Ed on the arm again, "amirite?"

Ed smiled a weak smile.

"I meant that I can use him as a one-man," Piruz caught himself, "one-boy focus group for El Gringo's new marketing campaign."

"Oh cool, man." Ivan said, "Are we gonna make commercials?"

"You're not involved in this, Ivan. You're too old for my purposes."

"I just turned thirty-two." Ivan jutted out his lower lip.

"You just turned thirty-OLD, more like."

"You're not planning on putting me in the commercials?" Ed didn't like the idea of being in commercials. He was a terrible liar; he'd be a worse actor. Besides, Gina would no doubt convert them to an internet format and spam his Instagram feed with embarrassing clips or screenshots. Ed could just see it now.