Refusing Service at Chipotle

The story below is about a Chipotle restaurant manager refusing service to a group of young black men—for reasons that are disputed. This sort of thing seems bound to happen in a) a nation where racial tensions are high, and b) restaurant chains give managerial responsibilities to young people with minimal training. Notice that the response from Chipotle seems to involve less than fully satisfying: their policy doesn’t allow managers to ask for payment before making food, but it does allow managers to ask for payment before handing it over. Doesn’t that raise the same issue?

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LINK: Chipotle fires St. Paul restaurant manager, retrains staff after viral video (by Karen Zamora for Minnesota Star Tribune)

A manager at a St. Paul Chipotle was fired this week after a video went viral of employees refusing to serve five black men and asking them to prove they could pay before taking their order.

Masud Ali, 21, said he and friends were told they couldn’t be served Thursday night at the eatery on Grand Avenue and were accused of being customers from an earlier night who weren’t able to pay for their meal….

The response from head office reads, in part:

“We don’t ask customers to pay for their meals prior to making them in our restaurants. The manager should have made their food and withheld giving it to them until they paid for it.”

What do you think?

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