Question

Case Application 5-B

ENORMOUS SETTLEMENT WITH FIRED MANAGER PROVIDES LESSONS FOR CHIPOTLE

“She's the American Dream. Just a hard‐working person, and when you call somebody a thief, you destroy their life. You're not going to be able to get a job anywhere with that label hanging over your head,” according to the attorney for Jeanette Ortiz after the long‐time Chipotle general manager was fired for stealing $636.

Jeanette Ortiz worked an average of 50 hours a week for 14 years at Chipotle. She earned $72,000 a year and was up for a promotion that would earn $100,000 a year when she was fired. The previous month, an armored car that was supposed to pick up large bills didn't show up. Ortiz put the money in an envelope and stapled it shut. She contacted the corporate office about the extra money and locked it in a safe located below a security camera. A few weeks later, she texted three superiors to tell them that the money was missing.

A manager looked at the surveillance video from the camera above the safe and determined that Ortiz took the money and put it in her backpack. When Ortiz asked to see the video, she was told that it was against company policy, although there was no actual written policy to that effect.

Ortiz denied the claims and suspected that she had been framed for the theft in retaliation for a worker's compensation claim she had filed for an injured wrist about the same time. When she filed the claim, her supervisor asked her to minimize the injury so her doctor wouldn't require her to take medical leave. Ortiz refused to lie to her doctor and took the medical leave. She was notified about the theft and fired while on medical leave.

Chipotle offered $1,000 to drop her claim of retaliation and wrongful dismissal. She refused. When the case went to court two years later, Chipotle claimed that it had lost the surveillance video. Managers had also deleted text messages concerning her firing and notes about the theft had been lost. There were discrepancies about the date that the money went missing that couldn't be cleared up due to the missing video.

The jury deliberated only four hours before ruling that Ortiz was not a thief and had been framed by Chipotle management in retaliation for her worker's compensation claim. She was awarded $6 million for emotional distress and $1.97 million for loss of past and future wages. She was also entitled to punitive damages, which were settled out‐of‐court.⁵²

Questions

1. What are the lessons to be learned about employee monitoring? Has this changed your views on employee surveillance or video monitoring? (LO 3, 4)

Answer 1

The most crucial lesson that the company must learn is that there should be a comprehensive system of cross checking of the surveillance process, and policies in place with regards the process and extent of surveillance, protection of employee's privacy and his /her rights to defend himself /herself against any possible findings from such surveillance system. In this case, the surveillance system was misused by the managers to settle an old score with the employee, and frame her into a false case of theft. The case is an outcome of ambiguous policies of the company to address such situations of vested interets where the people in power abused their power to peddle their own agenda and frame someone they had bad blood with.

Employee surveillance is good and effective if it has comprehensive guidelines for its execution behind it and it is backed by framework that has its own checks and balances to prevent the innocents from being trapped for personal grudge on the part of perpetrators taking advantages of loopholes of the system. It should also be ensured that such surveillance does not violate the privacy, dignity and personal pace of the employee to a reasonable level, and its policies give the employee an stake in the process of investigation and a chance to defend his /her position.