A Chipotle manager who was fired for alleged racial discrimination was offered her job back after Chipotle admitted it jumped the gun and didn’t wait for supporting evidence before the firing.
The alleged victim, Masud Ali, said the manager refused to serve him and his friends at a St. Paul, Minnesota Chipotle on Nov. 15. The 21-year-old then uploaded a video, alleging it showed racial discrimination.
“You gotta pay because you’ve never had any money when you come in here. We’re not gonna make food unless you guys actually have money,” the manager, Dominique Moran, can be heard saying in the video.
The company came under fire for letting the manager go despite scant evidence showing she did anything wrong. A review of the man’s Twitter showed he had a history of “dining and dashing,” which is illegal. In one tweet, he asked friends to join him at Applebees and said they could walk out without paying. In another, he said, “Dine and dash is forever interesting.” In yet another, he said, “I think Chipotle catching up to us fam [sic] should we change locations and yooooo what should we do about the other thang.”
According to the National Retail Federation, dining and dashing, shoplifting, and similar issues added up to an estimated $46.8 billion in losses in the United States in 2017.
Here’s the tweets directly pertaining to Chipotle.
Not only are these guys broke thieves, but they intentially got a woman fired for protecting her store (and still handling the situation with class while being yelled at by a pack of camera-wielders hoping to go viral.) pic.twitter.com/qjlVQHs2ok
— Tony (@SeriouslySerio) November 17, 2018
‘Trying to Do the Right Thing’
One Twitter user described the thoughts of people against the firing, saying: “So an African-American who openly tweeted about his love for dining and dashing got denied at a Chipotle cause he never pays. He filmed it and made it about racism. The Chipotle employee got fired. Never eating Chipotle again.” The manager retweeted the tweet.
Moran said that she was hasn’t decided on whether to accept the rehire offer.
“I was obviously trying to do the right thing,” Moran told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Monday. “I told Chipotle to tell the boys I say sorry. … I didn’t think I would lose my job, I thought I did something good by standing up for my people.”
She said Ali and his friends have gotten food many other times without paying.
“It was really frightening, to be honest,” Moran said. “From our point of view, we had five cameras on us. I think the anger came out of me. I was scared and panicking. I didn’t know what to do so I called the police.”
She said the pressure of the moment caused her to misspeak. “I should have been more clear that they were denied service,” Moran said. “I never meant, ‘Show me your money,’ but more like ‘Please pay for your food.’”
Support
A rash of supporters came forward after the video emerged, leading Dominique to thank them in an Instagram post. “I can’t thank you enough for the kind words, positive vibes, prayers and warm thoughts,” she wrote in a caption of a selfie.
On Nov. 19, Dominique said she’d been offered her job back and hit back against the racism accusations. “Racism is a real issue that I do not take lightly. Racism must be addressed, but what happened here was just wrong,” she said.
“Falsely accused and in return, cut off from a goal that I worked hard for. Today, I was ‘officially’ offered my job back. I’m truly grateful for all the support.”
In a GoFundMe launched for the manager, her friend said, “I don’t feel she deserves to be without pay for protecting her team and I want to fight for her.”
‘Normal Protocol Not Followed’
Chipotle admitted that it went outside normal procedures to fire the woman.
“Our normal protocol was not followed,” it stated on Nov. 19. “We reviewed the incident, apologized to our manager for being put in this position, and have offered her job back.”
Previously, the company said that it acted based on an investigation.
“Our actions were based on the facts known to us immediately after the incident. We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation, we’ll retrain and rehire if the facts warrant it,” Chipotle said in a statement on Nov. 18.
The company had told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the staff at the restaurant was being retrained “to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again,” claiming that it had conducted a “thorough investigation” after the video was published. “The manager should have made their food and withheld giving it to them until they paid for it,” it said. The company didn’t explain what went wrong in the initial investigation and it’s not clear if the investigation included looking at Ali’s social media history.