Weird Psych Lim

[firstfrost]

So, I've gone to Chipotle a couple of times with mjperson and have discovered that a particular aspect of their menu EXPLODES MY HEAD. The main section of the menu gives you a choice: burrito, burrito bowl, meat salad, or tacos. They're all the same price. Mike orders the tacos. Last time he got two tacos, this time he got three. But it's the same price, because it's just "tacos". I am unable to order the tacos, because I don't know what the right number to ask for is! So I order the burrito instead, because I know how many it is.

Even as I try to explain this now, I'm not sure it makes any sense. But, let's take a different example - getting coffee in the morning from Tosci's. When I want to splurge, I get a large vanilla latte (and then proceed to not be hungry at lunchtime, but that's a different digression). Sometimes, the barista gives me a latte, and sometimes she asks how many shots of espresso I want in it. The first time she asked, I was totally floored. How many? I don't know, how many is it supposed to have? Is it a choice between one and two? Three and four? (I now think it was a choice between two (default) and three (need-extra-caffeine-hit), but I still could be wrong.)

Except that in the coffee example, I don't know how much espresso makes it taste like what I expect; in the tacos example, I know what a taco is. I probably even can make a guess as to how many tacos hungry I am.

...

Having checked their menu on line, "tacos" is actually canonically "three tacos". Now I can order them, because I know how many they are. (And, sure, you can get two tacos for the price of three if you want, which I am fine with. Sometimes you just want two tacos!)

Comments

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Otherwise, I would effectively be saying "I'm not hungry enough to actually eat yet." :-)

This is true, but if it's a choice between "eat with the hungry person now" and "eat by myself later", the former often wins.