Power

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Power 〰️

The Edinburgh Fringe is back for 2026, and with it, our annual feature series! This year, we’re taking on POWER: Who’s got it? Where is it? Where should it be? How do you get it? Our comedians are the only ones with the answers.

By Adi Parmar

Throwback to the summer of 2018 when I was working for a finance company. The kind of company that has an in-house gym, draft beer on tap, and serves breakfast and lunch to all employees — incredible corporate perks. Yay! However, due to reasons still unclear to me, we were not served lunch on Fridays. Fridays were lawless; we were left to our own devices.

Several hundred people, spoiled rotten by daily office meals, needed to figure out lunch at the same time. Some teams would place bulk orders on Uber Eats, some would step outside for a walk and a sandwich, while some lone wolves would show off their home-cooked meals packed in Tupperware stained with an orange hue reminiscent of a leftover spaghetti dinner.

My team belonged to the first category. Every week without fail, we ordered burritos. I took on the humble responsibility of organising this. I was the most junior after all. I took immense pride in the smooth execution of this weekly operation.

There was, however, a fourth category: the company-wide kebab order. This category was not local to a team; it was open to the entire company. Unlike our modest little operation, the kebab people had infrastructure.

Organised by a multi-functional group of 3 employees from different teams, an email was sent to the entire company with a link to a local website: "Those who want to order kebab, please place your order using this link by 11:30am. We will place the order at 11:35 and pick it up around 12:15." They had a complete monopoly over the company-wide market. People from different teams would loyally order kebabs and often people from teams like mine, would switch from their own weekly orders to get a kebab for a much needed change in their weekly office lunch scenery.

And so the weekly office lunch machinery ran. Peacefully.

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Then one Friday, as I was collecting our burrito orders, two of the people who ran the kebab operation walked by. They saw me collecting the six burritos we had ordered that day from the delivery person, while both of them were carrying bags full of kebabs from a much larger order.

"Aw," one of them said, "that's cute. You guys do a little operation too." He paused. "Ours is much larger though,” signalling towards the big bags full of kebabs.

He laughed. It was clearly a joke. The other guy laughed. I laughed too.

"I don't want to send an email to the entire company," I said, explaining my stance to remain a "small business”.

"Yeah, don't think people will order burritos anyway," the other kebab guy said.

And they both walked away laughing.

I chuckled, but I took that personally.

The next Friday, I arrived at work with a mission. I would send an email to the entire company to order burritos, but I would make sure my email was better than the dull kebab email. I would make it funny.

I would mock the kebab folks. Yes.

So, I wrote it.

Subject line: BURRITO FRIDAY: Join the winning side.

And I hit send.

Within minutes, people started replying. People thought it was hilarious. Orders started coming in from every department, and by noon our burrito operation had expanded far beyond my own team. At the end of the day I sent another email:

Results: Week 1
Burritos: 43
Kebabs: 31
Burrito victory.

And thus began the Great Burrito vs Kebab Power Struggle.

Every Friday became an event. The kebab side retaliated the next week, attempting their own funny email, but by then, I had already thought of a funnier email for that week. People loved it. The whole thing became larger than lunch, a great source of entertainment for employees, yet another office perk.

This went on for a few weeks, but eventually the creativity on the kebab side ran out. Their emails became normal again: "Kebab orders are now open. Please submit by 11:30." But the burrito operation had by now become a stable company-wide venture. The kebab monopoly was broken. I gained infrastructure too: a colleague made a website, and we got a discount from the burrito shop for consistently ordering large quantities of burritos.

But without an enemy to fight, the emails transformed into something else. It became a sort-of company newsletter disguised as lunch ordering. I covered office events, reported on recent company developments, wrote satirical observations about meetings, and subtly mocked executives. Very subtly. And then cutely, at the end of it all “Order burritos by 11:30 using this link.”

Every week at exactly 11:30 on Friday, a new email went out. People expected it, adored it. If I was late by even a few minutes, messages would appear: "Everything okay?" "Where's the burrito email?" People would walk to my desk and ask, "Are burritos canceled?" The lunch order itself almost became secondary. People just wanted the email.

And in a company where departments mostly lived in separate worlds, everyone suddenly shared this one stupid thing. Everyone got the same joke, understood the references. Everyone waited for the Friday burrito email.

I remember my CEO once said to me, during a party: “I don’t think anything brings the company together like your email.”

And while I officially got into comedy by joining the improv taster course at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, the Burrito vs Kebab Power Struggle was my first step into comedy writing.

Adi Parmar: Sunny Boy is running at Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wee Room) from Aug 5-30th (except 19th), 19:00. Tickets here

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