Went to Chipotle for an early lunch with my kids today and was greeted by a sign: “Due to staffing shortages we will be opening at Noon”. Okay great, more “shortages”, guess we’ll come back another time.
Fast forward to tonight, wife and I decided to get dinner there instead. Placed an order online at 5:10pm, showed up at 5:40pm. The doors were locked, yet peering through the glass showed a full crew of staff working furiously inside. One of them saw me standing there awkwardly holding two kids, came up front and opened the door.
Employee: “Our system was down and just started working.”
(Employee starts taping up “IF WE DON’T HAVE YOUR ORDER CALL xxx-xxx-xxxx FOR A REFUND” signs)
Me: “Okay, I ordered online, do you have an order for
Two people start looking through the pile of printed orders and can’t find my name.
“Sorry but you should just go through the line, we only have orders from like the last 10 minutes.”
After they re-made our order the manager bagged our food and apologized for the computer problems and gave me the food for free.
“You don’t need to do that,” I insisted, grabbing my wallet, “it’s not your fault the system was down.”
Almost couldn’t believe my ears when he replied: “I’ve been yelled at by so many people tonight, I don’t even care anymore, don’t worry about it.”
I thought I’d be funny and joked about “RAISING MY VOICE!”, recording on TikTok and asking for the manager. He just rolled his eyes,
“You have no idea”.
Just made me realize how food service workers are treated like crap. Everyone over there was run ragged. I don’t know Chipotle wages but you couldn’t pay me enough to get berated by Karen who was mildly inconvenienced by having her order canceled.
Tl;dr thank a service industry worker.