Last week, a video posted by a Twitter user by the name of @Masudaliii depicted an uncomfortable scene. A group of young black males in a Minnesota Chipotle were asked to pay for their meals before being served by the establishment manager. "You got to pay 'cause you never have money when you come in here," the manager was filmed saying. The uploader captioned the video, "Can a group of young well established African American get a bite to eat after a long workout session?, tagging the official Choptle account. Shortly after posting the video, @Masudaliii went on to claim that the Chipotle manager showed preferential treatment to a white customer, and even went as far as offering her a free meal.
The video and subsequent tweets have since become widely circulated garnering the fast-food giant a great deal of backlash. "This is disgusting to see," one user commented. "I myself will never be in another one of your stores. You see the video what else needs to be shared your employees are racist." Chipotle responded to the controversy by releasing a statement which revealed, "the manager has been terminated and the restaurant is being retrained to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again."
In an unexpected turn of events, Chipotle has apologized and offered to rehire the aforementioned manager after screenshots containing tweets by @Masudaliii showed the user boasting about elaborate "dine and dash"plans that included "[eating] as much" as possible at local eateries and "[walking] the fuck out," surfaced. Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Chipotle said, "We have spent the last few days reviewing the evidence available to us regarding the incident...While our normal protocol was not followed serving these customers, we publicly apologize to our manager for being put in this position. We will work to continue to ensure that we support a respectful workplace for our employees and our customers alike."
