ChipotleReviews 128

You really have to try to mess up this badly. I knew something was up when they were telling everyone that had run out of certain ingredients, again. As the pandemic ended, this happened and systems were adjusting. Some leeway was understandable. Now? Well, they guy in front of me had to ask three times where the meal for his child was. That evasive, non-response was another clue.

When I retrieved my order, which was tipped onto its side with my name written on it … upside down, because they had run out of printing paper, something was clearly wrong. My child's meal was dumped inside the bag, which was flopped over upside down, and … nothing was out of whack? Why was there no rice all over the bag? My child's meal was missing its sides (and that's what he likes!) When I asked, the young lady just walked away to the back. Two more employees, who had just come from the back stared blankly at me and my apostasy of wondering where my kid's food was? Then the first women came out having re-made the order, rather than just adding the sides, I thought it was solved. She decided that my son did not need the quesadilla though. Nor did he need his milk? My burrito was also messed up. That means that every to go order MUST unwrap and check everything? They managed to screw up every aspect of the order, some twice.

As I say there watching, two things became clear.

One, they guy … sometimes two or three guys, working the to-go orders is just stuffing things into sacks. He was not checking orders (and may have assumed that one of the rotating cast of supporters were getting things). He was stuffing things in bags as fast as he could, and was just leaving out kids meals (as the third father behind me confirmed). So there is likely a hole string of befuddled customers wondering, "Why does Chipotle think my kids don't need the food I purchased for them?"

Two, its chaos. Only the guys working the grills appeared dedicated to a station. Everyone else is moving around like restaurant miasma. If there was a manager? AWOL.

It looked like employees were in open rebellion against corporate. Running out of ingredients and dorking up orders to generate complaints looks like a way to get 'we have no manager' messenge to corporate.

A refund then, right? You cant actually get a refund in store. You have to contact corporate. How? Use the app? Nope, The app doesn't process the orders you made on it. You have to tediously answer a whole series of questions and then … nothing. You cant get past Pepper. There is no way to get a human to respond. What a great way to make a bad situation worse! Use this method to get a refund … to not get a refund!

Messaging? Nope they have yet another method of 'bringing that to their attention' and someone might get back to you? No.

If you prepay for a steak, and someone brings out a salad saying, "Sorry we are out of steak," that would generally both annoy people and result in a refund.

Not with Chipotle. While everyone has bad nights, its clear from the shell shocked crew that they are getting as much help as I am. While this restaurant does well sometimes, issue like this appear randomly without warning. I've never seen it worse than this evening.

If every customer who needs a refund has to talk to corporate, there is no reason for corporate not to know about this. There is even leas of a reason to be actively making it worse by making the standard resolution process impossible, and for utterly failing to provide their employees with support of any kind.

I'm pretty much done with Chipotle.