Pros
-Free Meals (Between $10 and $15 a day) -Paid 30 minutes break -Grow opportunities. -Good Communication between Staff and Managers. -Friendly Staff -Kind-of-Flexible Schedule (If you need the same day every week free, they'll understand) Chipotle is a great company. They are constantly trying to get better and to make their staff and restaurants get better also. The problem is that, because all the rules they got, it can get very tought. You have to be very committed to the job if you want to enjoy it. Its not hard thought, once you know how the restaurant works, you get used to it and start getting better. The enviroement is good, friendly teammate who are also trying to help you, because its part of Chipotle's vision. But, not all Chipotles are the same, some may have a great management but harder to grow with and other can have a bad management and try to make you grow so you somehow try to fix that.
Cons
-Bad Management -So many rules that it gets hard to do everything, even for managers. -Very tough (Not recommended for lazy people or people who get tired easy) -Schedules are not really followed, sometimes you can work 16 hours straight cause they need people. As I said, Chipotle has so many rules. You learn them all and work with them but because of time, some managers want things faster but not better. In the Chipotle I work, I have to tell them "How do you prefer it? Faster or as Chipotle Standards say?" so I can continue doing it as I'm supposed to do it. I have worked in 2 Chipotles (I had to transfer cause I was moving from Maryland to Virginia). The first Chipotle was Military-like, everything was done as Chipotle said, you couldn't modify anything, they had the best management I've seen, but there were less opportunities to grow and it was tougher. The second one, has more freedom, A LOT of freedom, so crew members are used to do things as they want and not as they are suppose to. They change recipes, they don't follow standards and break even easy-to-follow rules. Managers work like that so they don't care how things are, but how fast you are. This can be some troublesome, you can even get in trouble with a customer. And if you follow their "rules" and not Chipotle's ones, they can even try to control you and take advantage of you. The difference between the Chipotle are the sales. While in the first one we were full of customers at almost every hour, in this one no. So in the first store, they could afford enough personal to do every task and to have at 3 or 4 managers working at the same time. In the second one, there are less people, so you have to do more tasks. As conclusion: Its not impossible to work with, but you have to be careful on the management of the store. If you follow Chipotle rules and not them, it will be easier for you and if you get on troubles because doing the right thing, you can talk with the person in charge of your boss, not sure how they call him/her. If you want a job were you can get easily promoted by being good, this is the one. You have to be careful to manage your balance between Physical Stress and Psychological Stress.