Teach a Man to Fish

Many, many days ago I was at Del Taco eating burritos (as per usual). For entertainment during mastication, I was watching The Rest of Everest podcast on my iPhone.During a bite of my delicious half-pound bean and cheese burrito with red sauce, my Del Taco receipt caught my eye. It was flipped over, and the back exclaimed, “Free Burrito!” I thought, “Bueno.” The back of the receipt went on to explain that if I filled out an online survey within 48 hours of my visit I would receive a free half-pound bean and cheese burrito with the sauce of my choosing.I paused my Rest of Everest podcast and fired up the web browser*. I filled out the survey. The survey gave me a validation code to receive said free burrito.I went back up to the clerk and ordered my free burrito (I again opted for the red sauce). I took my burrito back to my seat and continued to overeat and watch podcasts.Then a twinge of curiosity hit me. You guessed it. My new receipt had a “Free burrito for survey completion” offer on it. You guessed it again. I filled it out and went up to the counter again and ordered another free burrito.However, this time the clerk was peeved. And rather than taping my receipt to the bag (which is their usual practice), he tossed it into the trash and gave my only the burrito in the bag. Normally, I would have made a stink about this, but I was totally full and really only wanted to see how far this would go.I went back to my seat and proactively filled out the survey a third time. Although this time the “Staff Friendliness” section received poor marks.Make it Macho, dear readers.

*For PC Users, the iPhone web browser is a modified version of Safari**.

**I’d just like to take this opportunity to publicly point out that Apple big time missed the boat when they named their web browser “Safari.” Clearly it should have been named “iBrowse.” How cool would that have been?