A manager at a New Jersey Chipotle says she was fired for speaking up about the company’s “laissez faire” attitude toward food safety — including managers regularly fudging records about critical health checks, according to a lawsuit.
Quincidy Boston, 20, a former service manager, claims she was forced out of the company on May 23 after calling out lax safety standards she witnessed at the chain’s Springfield, NJ location, says her Union County Superior Court suit from earlier this month.
Boston claims she witnessed managers regularly forge records indicating they had conducted food temperature checks and other legally required safety inspections, the suit says.
In one disturbing incident, managers didn’t make sure a customer’s throw up in the store had been properly cleaned up, resulting in Boston getting sick at work herself, the lawsuit alleges.
Boston, who started in the management position on March 7, was “deeply concerned” and she complained “many times” but “her objections fell on deaf ears,” the court documents state.
Chipotle corporate “and their responsible managers encouraged [Boston] and other managers to forego necessary and critical food safety inspections, and to fraudulently indicate that such inspections had occurred in the store’s ‘Black Book'” log, the filing says.
These temperature checks were meant to, “ensure that food was being prepared and stored to safety standards,” according to the suit.
But managers fudging these records happened on an “almost daily” basis, Boston claims adding that sometimes managers used her name when they entered in the fraudulent records, the lawsuit alleges.
Managers would also claim employees didn’t have any COVID-19 symptoms on status forms — without first actually checking with the workers, the suit claims.
When a customer threw up in the store on April 7, the mess wasn’t cleaned up with the proper PPE, the lawsuit alleges.
The worker who did the clean up should have been sent home for the day, as is protocol, but was instead instructed by managers “to return to the line, where they continued cooking and serving food to unsuspecting guests,” the suit says.
The managers didn’t follow protocol because they were “understaffed for the day,” the lawsuit alleges.
The next day, Boston says she realized she came down with the bug the customer had after she threw up at work herself and her daughter also fell ill, the filing claims.
Boston “was disturbed by [Chipotle’s] laissez-faire attitude towards health and safety protocols,” the suit says.
She even asked to be demoted on April 25 “because she was uncomfortable with forging the Black Book and foregoing necessary health and safety inspections,” the suit claims.
She “believed such conduct could expose her and [Chipotle] to liability,” the suit says.
Boston also filed ethics reports with the corporate office. She was told she could be demoted, but that she couldn’t work at the Springfield location anymore, and had to find herself a position in another outpost within two weeks, the suit claims.
Boston was unable to find a new post and was terminated on May 23. She is suing for unspecified damages.
She claims that she was fired in retaliation for whistleblowing.
“As alleged in the Complaint, Chipotle shirked its clear duty under New Jersey Law to abide by well-established food safety standards,” Boston’s lawyer Lauren M. Hill told The Post. “When our client objected to this conduct and voiced concerns for the health and safety of Chipotle’s customers and employees, she was subjected to retaliation and ultimately terminated.”
Chipotle didn’t return requests for comment.
In the summer of 2015, dozens of customers in Washington, California and Minnesota were sickened after eating Chipotle and in October and November dozens more in nine states came down with E. coli linked to the Mexican fast food chain.
In 2016, company faced a slew of litigation from shareholders who claimed it misled them about safety food standards and from customers who caught E. coli.
