Chipotle offers manager job back after refusing to serve black men

Chipotle said Monday that the company has offered a fired St. Paul restaurant manager her job back after receiving more information about an incident where employees refused to serve five black men and asked them to prove they could pay before taking their order.

The company said in a statement it has reviewed the evidence and decided to offer the manager her job back. While Chipotle says its protocol was not followed serving these customers, the company publicly apologized to the manager “for being put in this position.”

“We will work to continue to ensure that we support a respectful workplace for our employees and our customers alike,” Chipotle said.

Employees accused the men of being repeat dine-and-dashers. One of the men, 21-year-old Masud Ali, posted a video of the incident on Twitter on Thursday, alleging that he and his friends were subjected to racial stereotyping.

The video begins with a Chipotle employee telling the men that they must pay “because you never have money when you come in here.” Chipotle fired the restaurant’s manager after the online backlash and said it would retrain employees.

But in a statement Sunday, the company said it has new information that warrants additional investigation.

“Our actions were based on the facts known to us immediately after the incident, including video footage, social media posts and conversations with the customer, manager, and our employees,” Chipotle spokeswoman Laurie Schalow said. “We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation we will re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it.”

The company said it was aware of reports about since-deleted tweets that apparently posted on Ali’s account between 2014 and 2016 that included jokes about dining and dashing. Ali didn’t respond to requests for comment from local media outlets.

The company was aware of the alleged tweets when it decided to fire the manager, and the decision to re-evaluate the situation wasn’t influenced by the tweets, Schalow said. She declined to provide details about the new information.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)