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Chipotle fired a director who, according to the company, refused to serve a group of black clients.
((AP Photo / Don Ryan))
The chain of restaurants Chipotle announced Saturday to have dismissed one of its directors for having suggested in a viral video that five black customers considered ordering food without paying. But the company immediately acknowledged that his suspicions were well founded.
In a series of video clips seen more than 3 million times on Twitter, a Chipotle customer from St. Paul, Minnesota, identified as 21-year-old Masud Ali, and several friends being told by a manager: "You have to pay, because you never had money when you came here. "An employee adds," We will not eat unless you have money.
While Ali and his friends complain about "stereotypes", the videos recorded and uploaded by Ali show that the store's employees insist that they provide proof of payment and claim that the group has already ordered to twice food without paying.
In a video clip, the manager smiles and tries to ignore the men who produce what appears to be money. One of the visible employees in the kitchen is black.
"It sounded really racist – as she said," said Ali at the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper Friday, "She asked for proof of income as if I had a loan." On Twitter, Ali asked Chipotle: A group of young African-Americans well-established to eat after a long training session? "
Ali also published the restaurant's phone number and address on social media. A few hours later, Chipotle issued a statement in which he claimed that the manager had acted impartially and announced her termination of employment. But Sunday, Chipotle reversed his decision.
"Our actions were based on the facts we had immediately after the incident, including video footage, social media postings, and conversations with the client, the manager, and our employees," Fox News said Sunday. Laurie Schalow, Communications Manager at Chipotle. "We now have additional information that needs to be further investigated, and we want to take the measures that are required.After further investigation we will train and re-engage if the facts justify it. "
In a previous statement, the company said, "We are committed to treating all our customers with fairness and respect. … Regarding what happened at the St. Paul's restaurant, the manager thought that these gentlemen were the same customers on Tuesday night who were not able to pay for their meal. Anyway, that's not the way we treat our customers and, as a result, the director was fired and the restaurant is being re-trained to make sure it does not happen again more. "
In a separate article on Twitter, another Chipotle representative, called Shaq, wrote on Saturday: "We are committed to treating everyone on an equal footing and with respect."
In subsequent interviews, however, Chipotle's representatives admitted that the manager might have been right to claim that members of the group had ordered food a few days earlier without paying.
"We are not able to confirm this with absolute certainty," Laurence Schalow, communications manager at Chipotle, told The Twin Cities Pioneer Press. "We asked Masud when he was in our restaurant on Tuesday and he said no."
And almost immediately, it appeared that Ali had apparently spoken favorably of "dinner and dashing" – the practice of ordering food without paying for it – repeatedly on Twitter.
"I think chopotle should catch up with us.If we had to change location and yoooooo, what should we do about the other thang," reads in an article published on Ali's account in 2016.
In 2015, he wrote: "We finish going to Applebees and we eat as much as we can and we give a tip to the nice lady of 20 cents and we walk."
When another Twitter user objected, he replied: "We only borrow food for a few hours", instead of dinner and go fast.
Later that year, he said that "Dine and Dash is still interesting" and discussed the theft of Tabasco's bottles.
Another article said, "Guys, we borrow food … that's all. And if the lady tries to stop you at the door, do not hesitate to drag the sh– out of this bi —. "
When the information appeared, Chipotle first told other outlets that the manager had been fired appropriately because the store's policy was still to make food first and retain it if the customers did not pay.
Ali did not respond to Fox News's request for comment.
The episode follows several other incidents of alleged racism that shook the service sector. In May, Starbucks closed 8,000 of its stores for anti-bias training after two black men were arrested for trespassing at one of its stores in Philadelphia. The store manager, who had stopped working at Starbucks shortly after the episode, had called the police because the men were sitting in the store without ordering anything and had refused to order something on demand.
Earlier this year, a dismissed leader of Chipotle, accused of stealing $ 626, ended up earning nearly $ 8 million from the company in an improper suit.
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