Earlier in my career I worked in Eugene, Oregon for the Symantec Corporation (they’ve now recently rebranded as “NortonLifeLock Inc”). It was a west coast company with west coast sensibilities, so the building was set up with a wide open office plan. This means instead of standard cubicles, the walls were half size (or non-existent) to encourage “collaboration”. Nice in theory, but if you’ve ever worked in an open office setup you’ll know that most collaboration has little to do with your actual job. Collaboration topics usually included cars, movies, and “weird stuff that happened to me back when I was in the army/navy/air force/high school”.

Though Eugene is a ways north of Silicon Valley, the office building had many of the amenities you hear about the actual Silicon Valley having. In addition to the odd open office setup, there was also a yoga studio, gym, spin class (with staff instructors), nap rooms, and a recreation center complete with a basketball court and ping pong. Now, no one would really take naps or practice their yoga poses during work hours. I believe the idea was you would get done with work, go down to the gym or studio for some exercise, take a shower, get dinner at the brewery next door (which we referred to as “building 3”), then pass out in the nap room until the next day. Everything you need is at work so there is no need to go home! Work is home, home is work. A pocket utopian Arcology right there in Eugene! At least until the CEO took a look at the bottom line, fired everyone, then sold the building to Wayfair Inc.

By far the best part of working for Symantec was the cafeteria. They did breakfast and lunch to order and it was all surprisingly good. Since we were on the west cost, coffee was taken extremely seriously. The company hired a barista and the beans were always good quality by office standards. A big change from midwestern office coffee which is made from recycled grounds filtered through old socks.

What made the cafeteria really stand out was it’s breakfast burrito. It was made fresh and contained the usual ingredients, eggs, bacon/sausage, shredded cheese, sour cream, and hash browns. It was rolled up in a gigantic fresh tortilla so the resulting meal was roughly the size of your head. There was nothing better than taking a break from fielding calls from angry IT managers to go down to the cafeteria and order a humongous burrito topped with Cholula hot sauce. I’ve since moved back to the Midwest and I’ve tried to replicate the Symantec breakfast burrito at home, but it’s never quite the same. Maybe I should try and get a job at Wayfair and see if they’re still making them.

Rating: Five out of Five 🌯🌯🌯🌯🌯

We all have favorite foods. Breakfast burritos happen to be one of mine. Here is a review of one of the many I’ve had.

One of the few nice things about the PANDEMIC is that I been eating out of less vending machines. Yes, I have been working from home for the past two years, so I have direct access to a “stove” which I can use to prepare “food” for “consumption”. Before this I have a few options for lunch at work:

1. Bring something from home and microwave in the office kitchen (note: if you do this with fish your coworkers will ritualistically execute you)
2. Order a gigantic meatloaf sandwich at a nearby restaurant and pass out at 2PM
3. Pray to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of office workers, that someone ordered pizza for a meeting and had leftovers
4. Get something horrible out of the vending machine

Usually I would forget 1, be too busy for 2, and my prayers would go unanswered for 3, so 4 would be my last option. That’s where my good friend DON MIGUEL would come in.

As you can see this breakfast burrito has friendly packaging that displays quite a bit useful information. “Whole Eggs”! “Three Cheeses”! “Hand Made”! As far as office vending machine meals go, this one is halfway appetizing. But how does it rate up?

Tortilla

This burrito comes out of a vending machine. Sometimes it’s completely frozen, other times it’s only halfway frozen. As a result the tortilla doesn’t really hold up. It kind of flakes apart as a result, perhaps the worst part of the Don Miguel Breakfast Burrito

Fillings

The burrito comes in two flavors: “Bacon” and “Sausage”, but there really isn’t much of a difference between the two. Overall I’d say sausage is the better of the two. The eggs remind me of the powered eggs I’d eat while camping as a kid, you know the kind you’d mix with water and they’d turn kind of green.

Overall

So the tortilla is bad, and the filling is also bad, but overall the burrito is quite good. Why is this? Well, it’s better than every other option in your work vending machine. Much better than the frozen cheeseburger, much better than eating two granola bars, and a whole lot better than the white bread ham sandwiches which I assume the vending machine company shop lift in mass from nearby Super America gas stations

Rating: Two out of Five 🌯🌯