Hi all.
I wanted to share my story, it’s been aching me for the longest, and i wanted some advice about what went down with me and my old GM at the time.
Jumping back to last summer of 2021, I was 16 at the time and was looking for a new job environment. I previously worked at another fast food chain and wanted something new, of course chipotle caught my eye—so i applied.
The GM at the time was 20 years old, and on our first interview, I thought he was the sweetest. We both were hispanic, so I thought that would make me feel more comfortable working here.
It started out as being good coworkers, here and there we’d talk outside of work. Nothing too special. It evolved into having late night phone calls to which i thought was okay, cause he made me think otherwise. It then grew to him texting and calling me through iMessage nearly daily. I didn’t know till a couple weeks after I started working, was when I found out he had a wife and family. His wife apparently found out about us friendly casually messaging, but he claimed later that they were on the verge of a divorce, so it didn’t matter much to him at the time.
I backed off at the time, because i still didn’t want to interfere with anything with misinterpretation. But we ended up switching to texting on reddit and later snapchat, where he would proceed to make a snapchat account just to secretly talk to me. Every. Single. Day.
It went on like this until later late fall, when he started to causally touch my leg. Then it proceeded either to me coming into work nearly an hour early before anyone came, or stay late until everyone else left—Mind you it was just me and him alone at the restaurant. At the time, he claimed he fell for my personality, he would touch and kiss me.
and i let him.
Fast forward to early winter, we had a “thing” going on at this point.
It wasn’t till one night, when everyone had left, he made a move on me. He was practically begging to touch me where i didn’t want him to. He kept and kept unzipping me, I remember I kept telling him no. But he didn’t listen until I just ran out of there that night.
I had never felt so violated, and i cried to sleep that day.
Obviously since I “loved” him at the time, I forgave him and forgot about it. Hell, I didn’t even remember that night until MONTHS later because of how traumatic it was for me.
Another instance, another night when he got out of work to see me, we were supposedly supposed to go get ice cream. But that night, he wanted sex.
Badly.
Mind you I was SIXTEEN. I had no intention of having sex not until a few more years. That night, was the night I had to keep saying NO. We were there for over an hour, it consisted me of my reasoning to why I didn’t want to do anything like that. He kept gaslighting me and making me feel bad with the, “if you loved me, you would.” It was during a mild winter storm, i didn’t think he’d let me leave anyways. I went ahead and gave in.
I gave in.
I lost a piece of myself that night. I wasn’t the same after.
Fast forward to summer of 2022, before which he claimed that his wife wanted to mend their marriage. She had gathered proof of us exchanging our affectionate messages. He had no choice but to stay in that marriage, but he still claimed he “loved” me and wanted to continue staying in contact with me. So he ended up transferring me to a different store to avoid any more problems.
Up until It got too much for me, I ended the nearly-year relationship we had. I didn’t realize for the longest until i saw that he had groomed me.
My GM GROOMED ME.
He used me for sex. That’s all he wanted when we saw each other outside of work, sex—to show how much he claimed he loved me. Alongside, he would always talk about our future together, and how he’d never leave me.
I blocked him out of everything and cut all ties with him. He manipulated me, and i didn’t know any better at the time because I was, and I still am a minor. A child. I won’t lie and say what I did wasn’t wrong, because it was. Something that will forever stick with me.
There were accusations of him being a predator even before I came to that store, I chose to not believe them, because I trusted him with the excuses he came up with.
Last week, was when I heard from a close friend of mine that he’s now been trying to get with a new hire close to my age, at his now, restauranteur store.
It brought back a lot when she first mentioned it. I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last he gets with. I can guarantee you that. He’s a predator that only has a crew consistent of MINORS. I don’t want a repetition of what happened to ME, to someone else. I was used.
I want to report him, solely because cause of the fact that he did sexually assault me more than once, and I have proof i’m not the only one he’s done something like this to. The thing is, I don’t want my parents to know about the subject if theoretically, I WERE to report it. They’re strictly religious and don’t want them to look down on me.
It took me while to speak up and open up to someone about it, it took a toll on me. What happened during this so called “relationship”, created some trauma that keeps me awake at night. I will forever resent myself for being so stupid and letting it happen to me.
People of reddit, what should I do?