Chipotle’s Disgusting Order Reminds Us to Be Polite With Service Workers
The most hated non-politician on Twitter this weekend was designer Josh Williams, who showed off his Chipotle trick for ordering (getting employees to package each ingredient separately) and asked, “Am I weird? Or brilliant? Twitter basically chose option C: Josh is an asshole.
Josh’s tweet went very viral due to the critical tweet quotes that far surpassed the original:
Bravely digging deeper, Josh addressed most of the other criticisms of his hack: He doesn’t want to cook, so he drives 45 minutes to Chipotle. He said that even if he could cook on Sunday in Napa Valley, “everything closes at 5:00 pm,” including grocery stores (which is not the case at all ). Also, he doesn’t know the Chipotle salsa recipe ( there are several online out there , although they accept the job). It even protected the wasted plastic . But he did not challenge the main criticism above: his order is a pain in the ass for the Chipotle workers. He even took screenshots of former food service workers who pointed this out:
This opinion was not unanimous: in the description of the BuzzFeed incident, several commenters stated that they work in the food service industry and have no problems with this request. Others noted that “real” Takeria do this all the time. Of course, this doesn’t erase employees who hate extra work, but they have no choice. Always ready to learn and grow, Josh agreed that these employees deserve a tip.
All of this is a dramatic reminder that many life hacks are simply passing your problem on to someone else. This is often normal! This is mainly commerce. Some retail tricks, such as buying a floor-standing model or buying in the off-season , bring some benefit to the other party. Others, for example, use fake personal information for loyalty cards , exploit a highly profitable company that tries to exploit you. But the Chipotle hack mostly relies on the extra work of a low-paid employee who can’t say no. For many of us, this is ethically questionable.
Here are some other hackers that cashiers and other service workers hate, according to several Reddit threads :
- Ordering “secret menu items” and expecting employees to know the recipe (although many employees will happily accept a special order if you explain it politely)
- Throw kids in the toys section like it’s free babysitting.
- Ask for discounts or try to circumvent corporate rules that the cashier has no control over.
- Prepare a “ghetto latte” by ordering an espresso in a large cup and pouring the rest of the free milk.
- Combining a large number of coupons
- Breaking big bills with tiny purchases
- Put a cash tip on the table and explicitly pin it every time you don’t like the server
Some of these behaviors are not always dire; they just require careful judgment and empathy for the person carrying out your hacker attack. If an employee does not have the freedom to tell you when you are being unreasonable, your job is not to cross the line and adequately reward whoever does the extra work for you.