Chipotle Offers to Reinstate Manager Unfairly Fired Due to Food Thief’s Viral Video
For once, the mob may not have won. Entirely.
Karen Zamora at the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune reports:
Chipotle on Monday offered a manager her job back after she was fired for not serving five black men last week, an incident captured in a video thread that went viral.
Dominique Moran, the manager at the Grand Avenue Chipotle in St. Paul, said she had her team’s best interest in mind when she repeatedly refused service to the group of men Thursday night. She was surprised that Chipotle initially fired her and hasn’t decided if she will return to her job with the store.
“I was obviously trying to do the right thing,” Moran said Monday. “I told Chipotle to tell the boys I say sorry. … I didn’t think I would lose my job, I thought I did something good by standing up for my people.”
Chipotle fired her Friday, saying she did not follow company policy, which says employees should not ask customers to pay for their food before they order it.
On Monday, the day it reversed course, Chipotle said it spent several days reviewing the available evidence.
“While our normal protocol was not followed serving these customers, we publicly apologize to our manager for being put in this position,” the statement said. “We will work to continue to ensure that we support a respectful workplace for our employees and our customers alike.”
Whether Ms. Moran wants to continue to work for such a company is another question entirely. But at least, now, it’s up to her.
I do not attribute this outcome to myself, but I did contribute to the pushback that achieved this result. I’ll describe what I did as a blueprint for how to deal with these situations.
First, on Sunday morning, I sent an email to Karen Zamora, the reporter at the Star Tribune who wrote the original story about the kerfuffle as well as the story linked above, and brought to her attention the evidence suggesting that the “customers” were in fact repeat food thieves.
Second, I tweeted at Chipotle’s corporate Twitter account:
So, @ChipotleTweets, until you reinstate the manager you fired for refusing to serve a food thief, why should law-abiding people who pay for their food patronize your establishment? https://t.co/cCpy0kTiZc
— Patterico (@Patterico) November 18, 2018
This is one of the few ways to actually get results these days, because the poor schlubs running these corporate accounts have the idea that any criticism is a crisis that has to be headed off. To be sure, that attitude contributed to Ms. Moran’s immediate firing — but good-hearted people can take advantage of that mindset to use Twitter to effectively push back against the mob. In this case, Chipotle’s response to me was their first indication on Twitter that they were having second thoughts about the decision:
Our actions were based on the facts know to us immediately after the incident. We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation, we’ll re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it.
— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) November 18, 2018
I kept pushing back:
Instead of acting on facts “immediately” known, giving into the mob, you should have waited for the “additional information” before acting.
— Patterico (@Patterico) November 19, 2018
Third, I wrote a post about the issue. And some people put it on the Twitters and the Facebooks. Which, God love ’em.
Which reminds me: at the urging of a former blogging colleague, I have added some shiny new social media buttons for each post, thus bringing the blog current with 2011 blogging standards. People have been asking for them for a while but I got motivated last night. I think they work quite nicely. You’ll find them at the top of this post. Give them a spin!
And always, always push back against the mob. It can work.
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]
Ding.
Patterico (115b1f) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:01 pmDo I have to have a Twitter account to use that button?
Kevin M (a57144) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:09 pmI would be surprised if she hasn’t already accepted a more attractive job offer.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:09 pmI would be surprised if she hasn’t already accepted a more attractive job offer.
At, say, Chick-fil-a
Kevin M (a57144) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:10 pmI don’t know of it registered but after getting fired by Chipotle should have asked me
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:17 pmfor a job in a heart beat I would have said yes. Chipotle’s loss is my gain.
they’re completely ignoring the queso issue
unbelievable
happyfeet (28a91b) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:19 pmThe Lord (and Patterico) works in mysterious ways!
This was a huge window opening after a door was closed for the manager in question. I hope she takes advantage.
Ed from SFV (6d42fa) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:23 pmAs much as some of us (I hear you, Beldar) hate Twitter, it is probably the best way to get customer service from a big company. One huge advantage is that Tweets to them are public, so everyone gets to see if they are non-responsive to criticism and complaints. And sure, the people with the biggest Twitter followings are the ones who get the most attention, but in general it does increase everyone’s odds of customer service success. Last year my parents had a snafu with their Medicare enrollment. My mom was spending an hour on hold and then getting a customer service rep who was less than helpful, so I fired off a Tweet to the provider and asked why they were giving an elderly couple the run-around. Within five minutes I had a response asking me to direct message my parents’ phone number, and a new customer service person who actually knew what the hell they were doing called my parents within 10-15 minutes after that. As much as we might hate it, that’s the serious power of Twitter.
JVW (42615e) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:32 pmYes. The button pops open a window that allows you to tweet it from your Twitter account. No account, no using the button, unfortunately.
Patterico (115b1f) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:54 pmGood on you, P!
Q! (86710c) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:56 pmGood. I wonder if she’s kin to the Taqueria Moran in Chicago’s Logan Square. Do a GFM to start one up there.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 11/20/2018 @ 12:59 pmIt gets worse. It appears that Chipolte actually knew of the “dine and dash” tweets BEFORE they fired their manager:
https://twitter.com/MattPalumbo12/status/1064310944082333696/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1064310944082333696&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F
Their current claims are nothing but revisionism.
LKB (e665a9) — 11/20/2018 @ 1:06 pmMeanwhile it seems all of romaine lettuce is a safe
narciso (d1f714) — 11/20/2018 @ 1:13 pmas chipotle, btim
You meant to say “migrant toilet paper”.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 11/20/2018 @ 1:19 pmThis is Barbara streisand, they need to be able to identify and isolate the strain.
narciso (d1f714) — 11/20/2018 @ 1:27 pmChipotle: “Our actions were based on the facts know to us immediately after the incident. We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation, we’ll re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it.”
Patterico: “My call for a boycott was based on the ‘facts know to me immediately after’ Chipotle’s actions. See how that works, guys?”
Karl Lembke (e37f42) — 11/20/2018 @ 2:17 pmi been eating romaine i guess i got a good one or something
happyfeet (28a91b) — 11/20/2018 @ 2:38 pmI’ve been flagged twice for trace amounts of e coli, I imagine it was the school burgers
narciso (d1f714) — 11/20/2018 @ 3:23 pmAre they really “customers” if they don’t pay?
DarrenM (a4eb00) — 11/20/2018 @ 3:32 pmin franchise shattering news, crimes of grindelwald is decidedly selected, they brought over ezra miller from justice league,
narciso (d1f714) — 11/20/2018 @ 4:12 pmI still think Twitter is the Devil’s Dandruff, not often enough used for good. But this is one of those moments. Way to go, Patterico. Well done.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/20/2018 @ 4:21 pm“I’ve been flagged twice for trace amounts of e coli, I imagine it was the school burgers.”
You may have combined the Cuban Slide with teh Limbo and dipped waaaaay too low.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/20/2018 @ 4:24 pmYes. Well done, Patterico.
nk (dbc370) — 11/20/2018 @ 4:33 pmOT but too irresistibly Trumpy to ignore: Trump Lawyers Submit Written Responses to Mueller’s Questions:
This actually makes sense to me, from the perspective of Trump’s defense lawyers. They are apparently confident that there’s no “there there” on the subject of Russian collusion, at least as to the POTUS, such that the POTUS is at little or no future risk from any answers he makes now.
But under no circumstances are they going to give Mueller, in writing and in a format that cannot be escaped or dodged in the future, yet another set of explanations as to why Trump fired Comey. Trump managed the firing in the stupidest possible fashion, of course, and then proceeded to give multiple mutually inconsistent explanations for it. It has always been the inconsistent explanations that has generated Trump’s possible criminal jeopardy for obstruction of justice charges, because the same action — here, an executive branch personnel decision within any POTUS’ unquestionable statutory and constitutional authority — can either be entirely innocent or entirely corrupt based on the actor’s secret intentions. When the actor is telling obvious lies in public about his intentions — and there is no other possibility than that he was lying, since it’s absolutely impossible for all of his mutually inconsistent explanations to be true — that course of deception leads any reasonable observer to wonder: “What is Trump lying in order to protect? Could it be that the true explanation is that he was trying to conceal an obstruction of justice motivated by the requisite ‘corrupt heart’ to implicate the obstruction of justice laws?”
The reason Mueller wants a personal interview with Trump to grill him about the Comey firing is so that Mueller can probe those inconsistent explanations. Lawyer-scripted answers to the very same questions would be nearly worthless to Mueller’s team, because it would tell them nothing about how believable Trump might be on the hypothetical witness stand (whether in an impeachment proceeding or some subsequent criminal proceeding) when he tries to reconcile those inconsistencies and give his “one true explanation.” If — as seems entirely within the realm of the possible, given Trump’s spectacular lack of self-discipline — Trump not only fails to reconcile his prior explanations but even offers new ones in an interview, then that would tend, all other things being equal, to lead a reasonable prosecutor to believe that he might be able to present proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the requisite “corrupt heart.”
So: Given where they are now, in which they obviously don’t have Mueller’s assurance that he will content himself with these written answers on the collusion stuff, but no answers at all pertinent to obstruction of justice, Trump’s lawyers must continue to take very seriously the possibility that Mueller will indeed try to force Trump to testify through a grand jury subpoena, despite the protracted court battle that would doubtless trigger. However they assess Trump’s chances of winning that fight — and despite Giuliani’s whistling past the graveyard, I rate his chances of blocking a grand jury subpoena in its entirety at 10% or less; I frankly expect him to lose 9/0 or at most 8/1 (Thomas dissenting) in the SCOTUS if the issue is pressed — Trump’s lawyers certainly don’t want to give Mueller another version of Trump’s explanations to shoot at when they finally do get him under oath for a live cross-examination.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/20/2018 @ 4:55 pmAsk Stephen hatfill about muellers due diligence,
Narciso (cc845e) — 11/20/2018 @ 5:11 pmto lead a reasonable prosecutor to believe that he might be able to present proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the requisite “corrupt heart.”
Given Trump’s habitual, almost obsessive, proferring of alternative facts that often have little or no relation to reality,perhaps his lawyers should argue that no inference about Trump’s intent or state of mind can be rewsonably made. This is the man, after all, who if he accidentally tells the truth immediately repents thereof.
kishnevi (4d78f4) — 11/20/2018 @ 5:27 pm@ kish (#26): Yes, his best defense is: “I wasn’t lying to conceal some deep wrongdoing, I was lying because I lie all the time, reflexively, because I say whatever comes into my head at any given moment which I think is best for the Trump Brand, and I’m incapable of distinguishing truth from fantasy.”
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/20/2018 @ 5:33 pm@ Beldar – I think you are describing the mindset of whole Beltway intelligentsia pundit class there…. 😉
The cynic in me wonders if the manager was a white woman, would she still be offered her job back? I kinda doubt it cause she would be accused of “insensitivity” *eye roll*
CygnusAnalogMan (9c66ec) — 11/21/2018 @ 6:20 am27. Beldar (fa637a) — 11/20/2018 @ 5:33 pm
His best defense actually is:
“I didn’t fire Comey to conceal some deep wrongdoing, because there wasn’t any on my part or anyone I knew (that I knew of.) I had nothing to do with any hacking, for instance. And, while for someone else, interfering with an investigation could be construed as obstruction of justice even when there is no underlying crime, it isn’t for anyone who is acting in a rightful supervisory capacity.
Furthermore, none of the statements about why Comey was fired were made under oath, so they are not matters for investigation. DOJ policy in any case is that no president can be indicted while in office, and even if that is not the law, Mueller is bound by it. Congress, of course, can do whatever it wants in the matter of impeachment, and I’ll take my chances, which are good since it requires 2/3 of the Senate plus a majoroty of the House, , or the loss of a re-election bid, or the expiration of a term, to remove a president.”
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 11/21/2018 @ 1:15 pm@24 Beldar: Have you seen the clip from the interview with Chris Wallace where Wallace mentions Trump’s team and Trump immediately indignantly interrupts to insist there was no team, that he himself answered the questions and the lawyers simply wrote what he told them to write? I don’t know if this is part of some sort of inferiority complex on Trump’s part where he simply cannot abide any suggestion that he is not The Smartest Man In The World, as if he might actually want or need any advice from a lawyer or that any lawyer would be qualified to offer him advice when he knows more about the law than the lawyers. (Just as he knows more about the military than the generals, more about diplomacy than the diplomats, more about banking than the bankers and, having read the 14th Amendment, confidently declared that “nobody knows more about the 14th Amendment than I do”.)
Now it’s quite likely Trump is just lying* about having crafted the replies to Mueller’s questions all on his own, but what would you do with a client who not only refuses to follow your advice but refuses to even solicit your advice? I just can’t imagine any ethical lawyer wouldn’t resign rather than sit there and allow his client to speak freely to a Federal prosecutor.
*Of course it seems to me that “lying” requires some attempt to deceive and Trump tells such ridiculously transparent whoppers nobody could possibly be expected to believe that there’s a plausible argument that there’s no attempt to deceive. I mean this is a guy who told an Economist reporter that he invented the term “priming the pump” – you just know that had to be followed by a “as I was telling my wife…..uh, Morgan Fairchild….yeah, that’s the ticket.” It’s not a lie, it’s just silly nonsense meant to amuse and entertain.
Jerryskids (702a61) — 11/21/2018 @ 3:22 pm30 Jerryskids (702a61) — 11/21/2018 @ 3:22 pm
Its probably close to the truth, because., ultiomatel;y, all the answers came from him.
Some of that, but mostly probably to avoid the suggestion that his lawyers were making up stuff. It;s somewhat of an exaggeration, or a lie, because they probably wrote the replies – he;s not mujch of a writer. But they did it after questioning him closely. So he can say that too.
I think he admiots the lawyer they edited it, and then he says he revised the edits. But I think he didn’t put pen to paper or type but just gave oral answers.
He did? Does he not know that phrase is older than he is – maybe coined by John Maynard Keynes. It was used by FDR.
https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/11/news/economy/trump-prime-the-pump/index.html
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 11/26/2018 @ 1:00 pm