Interesting.
Chipotle wrongfully accused a manager of stealing $636. She just won millions in court.
Paboojian said that in fall 2014, the Chipotle location where Ortiz worked had an extra $636, according to court documents, on hand after an armored car that routinely came to swap large bills out for smaller change didn’t show up. Paboojian said Ortiz found the extra money, sealed and stapled it in a manila envelope, and contacted the corporate office to flag the extra cash. She then put the money in a safe in view of a surveillance camera.
That December, Ortiz filed a workers’ compensation claim while suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. Paboojian said her bosses were unhappy that she would be missing work. And Ortiz believed that she was fired because of her disability.
On Jan. 3, 2015, Ortiz texted her boss and two other superiors to say the money was missing from the safe, Paboojian said. She told them that she had last seen the money on Dec. 30, along with another assistant manager.
At that point, the store brought in another manager who looked at the surveillance footage and said it showed Ortiz taking the money and putting it in her backpack on Dec. 29 — a charge Ortiz denied.
When she asked to see the footage, the employees told her that was against corporate policy.
But Paboojian said there’s no actual written policy that dictates whether employees can be shown video footage in these cases.
“They use that lack of corporate policy as a weapon against their employees when they want to get rid of them,” Paboojian said.
In court, Paboojian said her bosses filmed over the tape and deleted text messages and other notes detailing why they fired Ortiz, the Bee reported.
Still, Robert Hinckley, Chipotle’s lawyer, told jurors that the company has a policy of not showing video evidence to employees, the Bee reported. Hinckley did not return a request for comment by The Post.
On Monday morning, a Chipotle spokesperson told The Post that the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up email asking whether it is company policy to not show employees video footage. The spokesperson also did not respond to questions after the case was closed.
Paboojian told The Post that surveillance footage in the store tapes over itself periodically.
“If you don’t clip parts or save it, you can just let 45 days run and then it just tapes over, and they say ‘oops,’ ” Paboojian said.
Last week, Hinckley told jurors that it was a mistake that the footage was lost, according to the Bee.
