What was so great about that Chipotle job anyway?

Six years later and I still kind of miss it

Every time I go into a Chipotle, I feel it. The cilantro-scented memory of scoop after scoop of rice and chicken and chilled pico de gallo. The tortilla press of melancholy, the weighty heft of a well-rolled ghost burrito. My fingers flinch again, singed by the heat of trays full of carne asada, carnitas and sofritas, pinto and black beans.

The place calls to me. Every white or medium rice?, mild medium or corn?, every guac will be extra and do you want any chips? is an echo of who I once was. I feel a strange solidarity with the servers, like I should be behind the counter with them, facing the influx of hungry people, wielding a stainless steel ladle like a medieval mace.

Funnily enough, I only worked there for like a month. It was my senior year of college and I wanted more Christmas money, so I got a job making burritos and tacos and quesadillas at the Chipotle ten minutes from campus. Once or twice a week, for the last few weeks of the fall semester, I went to work in a black t-shirt and pants, hair up in a ponytail under a black baseball cap. I bought non-skid shoes that looked like high-top converse because I refuse, on principle, to wear clogs for any length of time. 

I learned how to measure out the right portions of meat and cheese and sour cream by eye, how to roll an overfilled burrito without ripping the tortilla, how to pinch closed the aluminum lid on a burrito bowl without shredding through my food-safe gloves. My favorite station to be on was the salsas. There’s just something so satisfying about a good healthy plop of salsa. 

I worked frantically alongside other college students, many of whom habitually vaped and smoked pot outside during their breaks and actually worked full-time (or close to it) at the restaurant, unlike my leech-like self. I went home after every shift with red fingertips, casualties of proximity to the hot tortilla press and food heating wells. And I took a fierce sense of pride in being able to keep up with the dinner and 9pm rush, coasting to the end of each night on a wave of busy-ness. There was always food to be made, or something to clean. 

I really enjoyed the work. It was meditative in a way, so different from the rest of my life spent reading books and writing research papers, and so fast-paced that I couldn’t waste time thinking about anything but the next burrito. It was an escape from the everyday, something to think about other than school and relationships. And the best part of the job was that every shift, no matter how long or short, earned you a free meal. Nothing compares to the sense of freedom and ownership that comes from assembling your own quesadilla over break, full of cheese and carnitas and mild salsa and love. 

Before starting my job at Chipotle, I wasn’t sure how it would go. But I loved it. 

And then I got fired.

Before you ask, no, I didn’t do anything worthy of a firing, like spit in the buff dude’s quesarito (a burrito made with two tortillas which themselves formed an enormous quesadilla). My only crime was being in the choir at school.

Every year over Christmas break the university choir went on tour for two weeks in one of four cardinal directions. This year we traveled south, all the way down to San Antonio, Texas. 

It was a beautiful time to be alive, soaking in the balmy heat in the middle of January. I think we were in Dallas when my boss at Chipotle called me and asked frantically if I could come in and work a shift. Apparently the computer system will auto-terminate your employment with Chipotle if you’re gone for more than two weeks or something without taking a leave of absence. Which was surprising to hear, mainly because I had known that before leaving, and that’s why I took a leave of absence over winter break. 

Evidently someone had dropped the ball. 

I told my boss I was in Texas, so there was no way I could make it to work that afternoon. And I reiterated that I had tried to take a leave before going on the trip. So he told me, okay, I’ll make sure you get put on leave for the next week and then the weekend you get back, you will be on the schedule. 

Peachy. I get to keep my burrito job.

Not!

See, the thing about this Chipotle job was that some things were kind of haphazard. Almost everything on the organization/communication side of things, actually. And the way we all got the schedule every week was thus: the schedule would be posted on a cork board next to the manager’s office. Then the assistant manager would take a picture of it and send it to a Facebook group comprising all the employees at our Chipotle. So, already you can see there was a lot of room there for things to get confusing.

My manager had said I’d be working that Saturday when I got back, but my name was not on the schedule. I checked and double checked and octuple checked that Facebook group all week on our way back to Nebraska. Ultimately I figured I wasn’t on it because the computer system needed another week to get me back on track. I don’t know, technology. So of course I did not go in for work on Saturday, because I’m not a psychopath who shows up to work without being scheduled.

The next week, I was scheduled for my regular Saturday time! Great. I wouldn’t need to call my manager to remind him I was back. I got to the Chipotle at 9am that day, ready to salt some tortilla chips, and used my fancy employee ID card to clock myself in. It didn’t work.

I went back to my manager’s office to ask if he could help with the machine. He looked blankly at me and said “Oh, you were terminated.”

I said, what.

He said, “You didn’t show up for your shift last week so the system terminated you.”

Okay, number one: in any normal situation I’d at least expect a phone call letting me know I’d been fired from my workplace. And two, what shift last week? I checked that schedule photo EIGHTEEN TIMES because I am incapable of neglecting my obligations. And three, why was I on the schedule for today if Skynet had decided I wasn’t up to burrito snuff?

I didn’t get answers to any of these questions. My manager looked sorry as he told me: it’s impossible to get re-hired at Chipotle after you’ve been terminated. And so it was that I was fired by Chipotle’s HR AI. 

You can imagine I felt pretty frustrated leaving the restaurant five minutes after my shift was supposed to begin. I was sadder than I would’ve thought, to be leaving before my time. 

But hey, I’d gotten my Christmas money at least. So I went home, complained to my boyfriend (now husband), and washed my hands of the whole thing.

I gave my sweet Chipotle baseball cap to my sister. I don’t wear hats. And yet when I visit a Chipotle, I kind of wish I did.