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- At least 5 employees of a Chipotle in Austin, Texas, told Insiders that they quit on November 14th.
- The site’s former general manager said the store was too understaffed to meet demand for food orders.
- Chipotle said the Austin site closed on November 15 “for available labor” but reopened the next day.
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A group of five Chipotle employees, including a general manager and a kitchen manager, resigned on Jan.
Peter Guerra, a Chipotle veteran of five years and six months general manager, worked at Scofield Farms’ Chipotle facility in Austin, Texas.
“My shop was severely understaffed, we struggled to stay afloat,” said Guerra, with less and less support from management. He said he had to work 80 hours a week on a regular basis, but often had to work extra hours to cover employees who quit and were leaving staff shortages.
Chipotle stores have two food prep lines: one for customers who order on-site and one for digital orders. Some Chipotle employees have previously told Insiders that it is hard to keep up with the fast pace that digital orders are piling up.
Guerra said the constant pressure to serve so many customers at once has made it seem like it is being doomed by management.
He said he was pushed to his limits on Saturday, November 13th, when digital orders piled up while a line of customers stretched to the door. He said he didn’t have enough workers to meet demand, so he closed the dining room to focus on digital orders only.
He said he was “in tears” at the thought of the same pressure the next day as just another person should work. He also had to close the dining room that day.
At the end of his shift on Sunday, November 14, Guerra said he had quit.
“I thought, ‘This will literally kill me if I keep doing this,'” Guerra said.
Kitchen manager James Williams also quit this Sunday after working 16 hours on his last day, he told Insider. In trying to manage both the dining room and kitchen, “I was infinitely too thin,” he said. When he and Guerra made the decision to close the dining room, they both said the customers sympathized.
“You could see the burnout on our faces,” Guerra said of customers waiting in line when the store closed. Digital orders continued to come in, and DoorDash drivers were also understanding and telling workers to take their time, Williams said. Both of them told insiders they finished their shifts and cleaned up the place before leaving around 1am
Mary Meisenzahl / Insider
“Anyone who didn’t check in the next day was considered quit,” Williams told Insider. “It was a ghosting process.”
A total of five employees at the Austin site confirmed to Insider that they had resigned on November 14. Chipotle declined to comment on the store’s staffing, but said the location is now open.
“The Parmer Lane site was temporarily closed on Monday due to available labor, but reopened on Tuesday during normal business hours,” a spokesman told Insider. On Thursday, November 18th, the restaurant still didn’t seem to take online orders.
“In some minor cases there were problems with the available labor, so we made adjustments in these restaurants to temporarily meet the needs of the company,” said the spokesman.
Chipotle, like the wider restaurant industry, has recently seen cases of workers leaving and quitting the company as a symptom of what is known as a labor shortage. Business owners say they cannot find staff and cases even cite a lack of willingness to work, while workers say they can ask for better wages and benefits in the tight labor market. This discrepancy has led restaurants to shorten their opening times and close dining rooms.
Many workers have said they feel they have no choice but to quit these demanding service jobs.
Do you have a story to tell about a retail or restaurant chain? Email this reporter at mmeisenzahl@businessinsider.com.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/chipotle-workers-quit-after-surge-in-digital-orders-2021-11
