This is a public service announcement.
Do not ever eat at Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Not anywhere, ever, no matter what empty apologies the CEO gives or says about food safety. They’re definitely no Jack In The Box in the 1990s; they haven’t improved shit. This isn’t about under-cooked food, this is about them forcing employees to work while sick and poor personal hygiene. It’s about them putting profits over people.
Links here and here and an employee account of what happens here (quoted below).
“… Chipotle’s restaurants are understaffed and its staff overworked, which leads to frequent violations of food safety codes. According to the publication, workers allege that cross-contamination is frequent, and that food isn’t always kept at mandated temperatures. One worker said the only time the staff at their location observes handwashing requirements is during a health inspection.
Additionally, Chipotle has been accused of forcing employees to work even when they’re sick, which is in violation of their company policy. One such case of an apprentice manager, who had been required to work while sick for several days, was identified as the cause of a 2015 norovirus outbreak at a Chipotle location in Boston, which led to 141 cases of illness.”
If you’re out and about busy running errands and you get hungry, you’re better off getting something at a convenience store or eating literally anywhere else. If coworkers want to go out for lunch and they choose Chipotle, make sure you don’t order anything. Do not touch anything in the store, do not touch your face, and as soon as you get back to the office, wash your hands.
I got sick and I wasn’t even the one who ate there.
My son ordered Chipotle last Sunday evening. By Monday night I heard the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting coming from the bathroom which is right on the other side of my bedroom wall. I checked on him to see what was going on, and within a few minutes he had also shit his pants and his bed. This is the kind of diarrhea that just… flows. You have no control whatsoever over what comes out of either end of your body. I didn’t have that this time, but I have before, back in 1998. It’s an experience you never forget.
I had taken a few days of PTO, and Tuesday was my last day. I’d planned on relaxing after spending a few days cleaning out closets and reorganizing things in my bedroom and the living room. Instead, I spent it doing copious amounts of laundry and shampooing the carpet throughout the entire upstairs because my poor kid was leaking shit all over the place. It was brown liquid and just… everywhere. I even had to wash the bathroom rugs. I had to wash his clothes, towels, bedding (twice)… everything. Toilets, too.
I felt sorry for him, but at the same time it was frustrating because it wasn’t how I had wanted to spend my last day off and I’ve been repeatedly urging him to stop eating out so often because a) it’s expensive, and b) there is no nutritional value whatsoever in the fast food he eats. And c) his “rent” pays for groceries, so he’s needlessly spending his money on shitty food when the pantry, cupboards, and fridge are full of delicious, nutritious food.
Thinking he had some run-of-the-mill food poisoning like E. Coli or Salmonella (nothing contagious), I didn’t think much of it. Then at 1:00am Thursday morning, I woke up and felt nauseated and went to the bathroom and threw up. It got in my hair and I tried to wash as much of it out as I could, then went back to bed. At that point I imagined it was indigestion because when I was a kid sometimes food just wouldn’t digest, I’d throw it up, and be just fine after that. But I wasn’t just fine after that.
The second time I threw up, at 4:30am, I heaved so hard I shit myself. Then I cleaned myself up and showered. I got up again at about 6:30am and threw up yet again. At that point I texted my boss to tell him I wasn’t going to be able to work. Afraid I might get diarrhea, I stripped down naked and put on just my bathrobe. Then I left the toilet lid up for easy access and put the trash can in front of it. I spent the remainder of the day, every 2-3 hours until about 2:00pm, sitting on the toilet and throwing up into the trash can because although I never did get diarrhea, the sheer force of heaving forced anything that was in my rectum, out into the toilet. I heaved and convulsed and convulsed and heaved several times because we have no control over how many times we’re forced to heave before the episode is finally over. It was all thick yellow stomach acid and nothing but, because I’d completely lost my appetite. It was the grossest thing I’d been through since 1998 and vomiting is so miserable, I would have gladly traded that for the diarrhea.
My son’s vomiting stopped sooner into the illness than mine did and there was less of it. He only vomited about four times over roughly 10 hours. I vomited seven times over 13 hours (it was every 2 hours until I remembered people use cannabis for nausea; I managed an extra hour break from the vomiting by vaping some Purple Gorilla Glue strain). His diarrhea had also stopped after all of the clean-up and second washing of his bedding. Although I didn’t get the diarrhea, I got something he didn’t– as soon as the vomiting was over I got a fever of 100.7. My normal is 97.3, so for a normal person that’s equivalent to 102. Then came the body aches.
The debilitating symptoms of this illness lasted only about 30 hours for each of us, but they hit us like a fucking freight train. This shit does not mess around. This absolutely could not have been anything but Norovirus. The timing and the symptoms as well as the fact that I got it despite not eating what he ate are all tell-tale signs of Norovirus. From exposure to symptomatic is only 12-48 hours. It took him 24 hours to develop symptoms. I got sick 48 hours after coming into contact with his poop which I cleaned up, just like old times.
We did bond quite a bit over this experience. We both learned a lot, spent a lot of time together, and even after feeling better, spent the weekend together. Today we made cookies and washed and detailed his car. It was a horrible experience but a good one for some mother/son bonding, which not many moms get when their sons are 24 (his 24th birthday is tomorrow).
We are both feeling much better now, although a bit tired. I’m still a little nauseated from time to time and can’t eat much. I also ended up severely dehydrated. My pee was dark orange Friday night and despite drinking a couple of liters of water yesterday, continued to be tinted orange until this afternoon. I think I detected a slight yellow tint in the whites of my eyes as well. I’m going to continue to eat small meals, hydrate, and avoid alcohol and anything else that might put a strain on my liver. Norovirus isn’t known to affect the liver, but I’d rather be on the safe side, at least until my eyes clear up and my urine is consistently yellow again.
Fun facts about Norovirus:
- Norovirus can live on surfaces for “days to weeks.”
- Alcohol-based hand sanitizers will not kill it. You have to wash your hands with hot water and soap for at least 20 seconds. It’s a very hardy virus.
- When we’re sick we shed billions of the virus, and it only takes a few dozen (some sources say as few as 10) virus particles to get us sick.
- We continue to shed the virus in our poop for up to two weeks after symptoms have subsided.
- It sets up shop in the small intestine.
The image below ought to show the victim sitting on the toilet with a trash can on their lap, because that’s really how this virus works.
Stay the fuck away from Chipotle!