Calling it Mexican food is a disgrace. It's not "Mexican," it's "Tex-Mex" - even Taco Hell doesn't claim to be a "Mexican" restaurant. If it were Mexican, they'd use Queso Fresco, not cheddar and monterey jack as their cheese. I don't get why the sour cream has to have a liquid-like texture. The only good thing is that the meat and dairy products are humanely obtained (free range meats, etc.), but the salsa isn't "fresh" - it all comes pre-packaged. They don't chop tomatoes, they come in a bag. So does the roasted corn. The only fresh thing in any of the salsas are jalepenos and onions. The vinaigrette for salads is good, but they use soybean oil for it which is just cheap and cutting corners. A lot of people are allergic to soy and can't eat there because they fry everything in soy, as well as spraying the grill with soybean oil, and using it in the dressing. When I started working there, they claimed that they used local produce when it was in season, but they never did (and there are a butt-ton of farmers here who sell fresh peppers for really cheap in the summer time. I would buy them at the farmer's market every week!). The one cool thing is that they started donating leftover food from the night before to the local food bank so at least it wasn't just getting thrown out. That's about the only really conscious thing my local Chipotle did.
It sucks to work there, because almost every college student on the face of the earth is maniacally obsessed with it (the one I worked at was right by the campus, so...), and they don't know how to put their trash in the trashcan, so if you work there, you're stuck cleaning up after people who should be old enough to know that you put trash in a trashcan, not leave it all over the table and the floor. Also, I've worked in a lot of very busy restaurants, but the way things are structured at Chipotle, there always seems to be not enough staff to keep up with the volume of customers. The place would benefit a great deal from even just scheduling someone just to keep the place clean during lunch and dinner rushes, but oh no, that would cost a little more money so they can't do that (even though it would improve their image thricefold to have a clean space). I feel like a restaurant should be kept clean, but it's about impossible to do that when you have a line out the door for 3 hours - you don't have time to leave the register to go clean tables or change trash cans unless you want to piss people at the register off and hold up the enormously long line. So the dining room is full of trash and nastyness and dirty tables, which as a customer I wouldn't want to sit at anyway...but for some reason so many people are just crazily obsessed with it that they still come in, and will still sit at the dirty tables. WTF is wrong with these people?
It's also echoey as can be because of the design of the building, and the LOUD music. It's just dinner, why do we need to pump up the music so loud people feel like they're at the club? Usually when people sit down to eat they want to have a conversation as well, but it sounds like you're in a noisy, busy bar on Saturday night in there when there are a lot of people. And if you're trying to communicate with customers to get their order correct, and you can't hear them because of the din in the background combined with way too loud music, it's pretty well impossible not to screw someone's order up once in awhile.
It also made my stomach hurt and gave me heartburn so I couldn't even enjoy the "perk" of free food. And I'm actually fond of cilantro to a point, but I hated how it was in everything, and how much salt was added to the food. The times that I did have a meal there, I felt sick for hours afterward, and normally I love very spicy food and it doesn't upset my stomach, but for some reason Chipotle's did.
They like to promote from within, but they promote people so quickly that managers aren't really ready to be professional and competent managers, so you get these people on a power trip about working in a place that's basically glorified fast food. Chipotle thinks that they invented the burrito. The higher up managers are often insufferable d-bags who think they're doing the greatest thing in the world and take themselves too seriously, as if there's no other place in the world but Chipotle. They say, "food with integrity," but don't practice employment with integrity. I've seen people get cussed out on the job. They claim that they'll teach you "how to run a restaurant." They don't, they only teach you how to run their business - most other kitchens are not run like a Chipotle. They act as if it's some golden holy temple of a place.
At a meeting one particularly insufferable douche of a manager I had at the time was asking us all what our majors were and how our various degrees would apply to positions you could get in the company. I didn't pipe in with mine, which is a double major in astronomy and physics...it would have been funny to see how that manager would have responded to that one (because so far as I know, there are no immediate plans to launch astronauts into space to run a Chipotle on the moon or within Earth orbit). They say they want smart employees, but I don't think they want people perceptive enough to realize that it's not the greatest place on Earth to work. They want brainwashable people, who will chant the corporate mantra day in and day out, and always speak positively of their job even through gritted teeth and a fake smile, even though they are obviously not happy.
I never expect service work to be hunky dory all the time, but I would rather work somewhere that people are given time to get to a certain level of competence before they're promoted to higher positions, and where people can control their tempers enough to stay level-headed even when it's busy and a little stressful. I don't even expect my coworkers to be super-geniuses, but I'd like them to be on top of their jobs so I don't have to "watch" them and do two or even three positions at once just to maintain, especially when I wasn't even a manager. I also don't want to hear racist and homophobic people go off on hateful rants about who they hate and why we should all agree with them. It's 2010, either get over your bigotry or learn to keep it to yourself. The company was founded by a gay man, so I don't get why this guy was allowed to go off on why he "hates all homos" and use a bunch of racial slurs on top of that.
That's my rant. I am so glad I got out of there. I just got a new job at another restaurant which I don't expect to be fabulous or glamorous, but if I get get through a shift without hearing a bunch of racial slurs or hearing a manager and a crew person having a shouting match and cursing each other out, then I'll be fine with it.