A manager of a Chipotle out in St Paul, Minnesota has been fired after allegedly refusing to serve a group of customers at the restaurant - as shown in a video that has quickly gone viral. But it's also been reported that Chipotle are considering rehiring the manager, as the video may not tell us the whole story about what happened.
This story has many twists and turns, but let's start at the beginning - where a group of black men were refused service at this Chipotle. A video of the incident was posted to Twitter by a man who's now been identified as 21-year-old Masud Ali, who captioned the tweet: "Can a group of young well established African American get a bite to eat after a long workout session. @ChipotleTweets ?? [sic]"
With the manager in question starting off the video by stating "You gotta pay, because you’ve never had money when you come in here", the men in question here try to order anyway, before complaining about stereotypes and threatening to post the video online.
In response to this video racking up over six million views in just three days, Chipotle moved swiftly to relieve the manager of her duties, adding the customary statement after a racist incident of "treating all of our customers fairly and with respect".
"Regarding what happened at the St. Paul restaurant, the manager thought these gentlemen were the same customers from Tuesday night who weren’t able to pay for their meal. Regardless, this is not how we treat our customers and as a result, the manager has been terminated and the restaurant is being retrained to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again."
This should have been the end of it.
This story, however, is on the verge of taking another twist, after people took a closer look at the man who levied the allegations at the manage at this St Paul Chipotle manager. After allegedly uncovering a series of tweets in which Ali - who posted the video - admitted to dining and dashing (albeit posted back in 2015 and 2016), people pointed the finger back at Chipotle.
Under pressure from members of the public, Chipotle admitted that they might have acted a little hastily in firing the manager shown in the viral video.
"Our actions were based on the facts known to us immediately after the incident, including video footage, social media posts and conversations with the customer, manager, and our employees. We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation we will re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it."
Meanwhile, the manager who's been fired has been found on Instagram, and shared a petition called "Help Chipotle Manager Get Job Back", which appears to have been made by someone else who'd heard her story. "Can’t thank you enough for the kind words, positive vibes, prayers and warm thoughts," she posted to Instagram on Sunday.
