A Day in the Life of a Chipotle Team Member

I decided to take a break from my normal type of post (wait, I don’t have a normal type of post on this blog, I almost never post ;P ) and tell you about my job.

Most of you who know me know that I work at Chipotle Mexican Grill.  It’s my first job besides babysitting, and, while I really don’t like working with food, hate the type of schedule a food services job offers, and would so much rather be working at a library, it’s pretty good for a first job.  At least it’s not McDonald’s.

I work generally five days a week, sometimes morning shifts, sometimes evening shifts, and sometimes the dreaded and hated and abominated split shift (a couple hours in the morning/early afternoon, a brief one-hour break which is usually more like 45 minutes, and then back to work for the busy dinner rush).  My favorites are morning shifts, because I get there early, have two and a half hours of working without customers pouring in the door, and know that I’ll be done at 4:00 and can spend the evening visiting with Kyle and/or other friends. My main station at Chipotle is “tort”, which is the first half of the Chipotle-ordering process (rice, beans, fajitas, and meat), and also includes frying and bagging chips and frying crispy taco shells.

When I’m scheduled for a morning shift to “open tort”, I get there at 8:30 (usually about ten minutes prior to that, just to be safe…. always leave 10-15 minutes earlier than you need to because if you don’t, you are sure to get stuck behind snail-slow drivers that make you late.)  The first thing I do after clocking in and donning my plain black apron is cut lemons and limes for the dining room.  That only takes a couple minutes. After that, I cut limes for chips, and then the biggest part of opening tort: frying chips. Yay.

I’ve got to admit, the chips are pretty good… though I prefer mine with medium green salsa

Actually, frying chips isn’t so bad.  I come up with some brilliant ideas for my novel while frying chips.

I also get burned by splattering grease from the fryer or from chicken cooking on the grill right next to the fryer.  Fun fun. I am so thankful for aloe.

Anyway.  I set the fryer to 375 and set up my chip cart. The chips come premade and precut; my job is to fry and flavor them.  On a weekday, I have to make six hotel pans of chips, which takes about an hour. (This is just for the morning, as the process is repeated at 1:00 in the afternoon.)  On weekends, I usually have to make more.  I measure out the right amount of chips and lower them into the fryer grease for about 28-30 seconds, enough time for them to get nice and crispy.  Then I squirt lime juice over them, salt them, flip them, pour some more lime and salt on them, dump that batch in a hotel pan, and repeat for about 30 times until I have enough chips for the lunch rush.  Then I bag them and make sure the tort station is set up before we open.

There are usually people waiting to come right in as soon as we open at 11:00.  Then I begin the usual four questions that I ask about a gazillion times a day. “Hello, what can I get for you?  Would you like white or brown rice on that? Black or pinto beans?  What kind of meat would you like?”

I’m actually not addicted by any means– can’t even eat the chicken there any more because being around it so much has made my stomach adverse to it. I just posted the picture for the sake of graphics.

Working at Chipotle, it is hard to forget that people are individuals with real lives and that they probably aren’t all as stupid as they seem– or maybe some are, but I’m sure not all of them are.   But really, it’s hard not to question the intelligent of the people who respond to the question “Would you like white or brown rice?” by pointing to the rice that is brown in color and saying, “Is this the brown rice?” Well yeah, the rice that is brown of color is the brown rice, hello… And then there are the people who stand in line for about ten full minutes and still don’t know what they want when they get to the front.  And the people who want me to go all the way to the back to get white rice without the cilantro, which wouldn’t be a problem except that they always ask that when there is the line to the door and we’re crazy busy.  *sighs*  (You can get rice without the cilantro, but, if that is your preference, please come at 3:00 in the afternoon when we’re not busy. ;P ) My favorite people are the ones who come up to the front, ask cheerfully how I’m doing, and say, “I’d like a chicken burrito with white rice and black beans.” Just like that.  They know exactly what they want, and that I have to ask those four questions all day, and they make it very easy for me to get their order quickly.  I love those people.  I want to hug them.

We also get our regular customers.  One lovely couple comes in usually a couple times a week and know the staff by now, and we know them.  The fellow always like to have onions cooked up separately from the peppers, which isn’t a problem just because they’re so fun about it and we like them.   Then there’s the little girl who always asks for her kid’s meal in a bowl instead of on the kid’s meal dish, and always speaks up loud and clearly and knows exactly what she wants.  And then there is the fellow who always likes about five scoops of rice in his vegetarian bowl.

I have to say, whoever comes up with the captions and stories for Chipotle products is one creative and amusing genius.

The lunch rush is usually from 12:00-1:00, after which I make another batch of chips, usually more than I made in the morning since the dinner rush is usually longer than at lunch, and we need enough chips to last us until 10:00pm when we close.  After frying chips (during which time, if we’re not too busy, others of my coworkers are helping me bag them) I do the other duties of shift change, which is basically getting everything in place and cleaned up like new to make the place ready for the shift that comes in at 4:00 for the evening.  Some of these duties include washing down the walls (which get nasty when you try to throw food into the trash can and miss), wipe down the sneezeguard (the glass set up between you and the customers so they don’t get germs all over the food), empty out the trash cans, restock the tort station (tortillas, premade bowls, etc.), and other tidy-up types of things.

Then the evening shift workers start to show up, the clock strikes 4:00, and I happily head home or to the Shearers’ (with a couple bags of chips to share) or to my sisters’, happy to have an evening off to relax and have fun. Unlike the days with evening shifts when I wait around all day for my shift to start at 4:00 and roll burritos until 10:00.

So.

That is a day in the life of a Chipotle Team Member.  Today’s a bit different though.  Today’s an evening shift.  Which means I do nothing but ask four questions over and over again the whole evening while other people enjoy their Friday night off. 🙂  But at least some of those people get to enjoy some awesome burritos and super yummy lime-flavored chips.

Images are not my own but are borrowed from various locations on the internet.

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