Say What? Chipotle Now Has Nurses Who Check If Workers Who Call In Sick Are Really Just Hungover

For anybody who has called in sick when they were really just hungover, you might not be able to get away with that one anymore. Chipotle may start a new wave after announcing that it has hired on-call nurses who will check to see if employees who call in sick are genuinely unwell or just hungover.

Yes, you read that right. Chipotle really will have nurses on call to make sure employees aren’t lying about their cold or stomach flu.

“We have nurses on call, so that if you say, ‘Hey, I’ve been sick,’ you get the call into the nurse,” CEO Brian Niccol said at a Barclays conference on Wednesday, Business Insider reports. “The nurse validates that it’s not a hangover — you’re really sick — and then we pay for the day off to get healthy again.”

But Chipotle emphasized that this policy is part of its improved food-safety practices and keeping sick employees home is important following a norovirus outbreak among customers in Virginia back in 2017. An internal investigation found the outbreak was caused by the store managers failing to follow safety procedures and an employee working while they were sick.

“We have a very different food-safety culture than we did two years ago, OK?” Niccol said. “Nobody gets to the back of the restaurant without going through a wellness check.”

“There’s probably people in here that might have the common cold,” Niccol said at the conference. “Even if we clean up after you, and we don’t use a cleaner that kills that germ, it hangs around for the next customer. Even though our team member did nothing wrong — there was nothing wrong with our food — we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard to make sure that the dining room gets sanitized in a way that it hasn’t been in the past,” he said.

Roommates, what do you think about Chipotle’s new policy? Let us know!