“This Is America” explores the cultural undercurrents pulling Western civilization into the abyss.
When I worked, very unfortunately for very little pay, as a delivery driver at Better Ingredients, Better Pizza, ™ Papa John’s™ in Topeka, KS about a decade ago, and a few years before that at Domino’s™ in Valdosta, GA, the lowlight of any shift came when an order popped up for the projects, the address of which every driver knew all too well.
It was disheartening not just because the prospect of getting shanked and/ or robbed always loomed large, but because there was definitely, almost certainly, no tip on the table.
…All risk, no reward, as the investor class says.
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Anyway, it’s been eight years almost to the day since I stepped foot on American soil, and things appear to be as they were when I left in the Motherland, if not worse.
Exhibit A: a mammoth young scholar storms her way into a Chipotle uninvited and starts putting together her own slop bowl because the original order she placed via Uber Eats didn’t have the double meat she wanted or whatever.
Then, when an employee intervenes to stop the carnage, the scholar gets, predictably, violent. At the end of this news segment, in a clip uploaded to social media, she explains that she was, in fact, the victim in this drama.
(I don’t know if, sometime recently, Chipotle managed to get itself on the approved EBT list to pad its bottom line with a little welfare cash from the poors, but if it has, then this is the price its minimum-wage workers have paid.)
Remarkably, multiple other similar scenes have unfolded at Chipotles nationwide just in this wild year of Our Lord, 2024 — and we’re just focusing on one retail food establishment here.
Via Fox 2 Detroit, April 2024 (emphasis added):
“A Chipotle employee in Southfield, Michigan was shot in the leg by a customer Friday night, police sources told FOX 2. The shooting stemmed from an argument over guacamole.
The shooting took place at a Chipotle on Evergreen Road near Civic Center Drive, around 6:50 p.m.
“It was loud, and then we all just ran out,” said Michael Beals, a customer who captured the incident on video. “I wasn’t really thinking… there was going to be a shot, but there was.”
The victim, a 21-year-old man, is in stable condition, according to a release from Southfield police. He was transported to a hospital, where he is being treated for the non-life-threatening injury.
“I was just eating a bowl and I heard shouting. And then I looked over, they’re arguing. One of the workers went to the back, I don’t know why, and then when he was in the back, the customer walked around the counter, tried to grab his food and put it in a bag,” said Thomas Huber, another witness. “Then the employee came back, and they started fighting, and then we heard a gunshot and just ran out as quick as we could.”
The suspected shooter is a 31-year-old Detroit man, according to police. He was located and taken into custody shortly after fleeing the scene.”
(When I was a college student in 2008, I worked at a pepper farm in South Georgia making $6/hr under the table with a bunch of Mexican migrant farmworkers, who were mostly decent people, and a gentleman who went by “D” — so named because he was from Detroit, which he informed anyone of proudly within two minutes of meeting them — who could not, presumably, get a legal job because of his criminal record. He often regaled me and my two white friends, also college students, with stories from his hometown that were awfully similar to people getting shot in Chipotle like they did in the above story in a Detroit suburb.)
And from D.C. in September, via ABC 4 News (emphasis added):
“An altercation at a Chipotle in Mount Pleasant led to the arrest of one, according to the Mount Pleasant police Department.
Officers arrived to the scene of the reported assault Monday afternoon, and located the suspect, assistant manager of the location, Jaqueennia Loyd*.
Loyd appeared to officers as being visibly upset and agitated.
She reported to officers that she was working in the kitchen when a disgruntled customer came in wanting to know where the rest of their order was. Loyd explained to the unidentified male that the order would be out when it was ready.
In response, the male then took the food in the bag and tossed it behind the counter in frustration.
Loyd then told the unidentified male that she was not going to be disrespected and picked up the food from the bag and began throwing the ingredients towards the male.
The male then left the area and has not contacted the police department further about the matter.
A witness who was caught in the crossfire in the incident stated that Loyd was being snappy and agitated with customers. He told officers that the unknown male tossed the bag behind the counter but wouldn’t consider the bag to have been thrown at Loyd.
Upon further questioning of other witnesses, they confirmed that Loyd appeared to be the aggressor in this case.
Officers checked Loyd’s record in the process of analyzing the incident and found that she had a warrant out for her arrest in Richland County and was wanted for Fraud.
Loyd was placed under arrest and transported to the Charleston County Jail.”
*Let’s try to feign shock that the perp’s name is “Jaqueennia.”
Here’s what I’ve never once, in almost a decade in total spent living abroad, witnessed anywhere on multiple continents: minorities smashing up corporate food chains over guacamole.
I’ll let you put those puzzle pieces together however you like.
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Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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