What Does a Chipotle Facebook Page and a Cat  Have in Common?

Drum roll please… controversy.

Allfacebook.com posted a story earlier about the Melrose Place-like drama that’s taken place over this past week involving a Chipotle employee’s personal Facebook Page, the Chipotle Facebook Page and a cat that possibly met an untimely demise.

Here’s the 411 broken down:

• After 11 pm on Dec. 9, a status update was uploaded via an Adroid application to a Chipotle employee’s account.
• The status update read, “Soo I just ran over a white cat on my way home…oops!!! Not my fault!”
• Her friends promptly began to comment on her page.
• 9 minutes later, the employee made her first reply back to a friend who “Liked” her status.
• More replies from the employee’s account followed and one of her replies indicated her dislike of cats.
• About 24 hours passed with countless posts to the Chipotle Facebook Page, corporate finally made a response. By then, the comment strand was viral and thriving.
• Comments were posted like rapid-fire to the Chipotle Facebook Page by animal lovers, as well as rational and irrational people demanding the employee’s termination.
• The message strand was taken down by the employee and soon-after a response from corporate was placed on Chipotle’s Facebook page.
• Chipotle’s Facebook Admin posted a message stating they were aware of the employee’s status message and that the account had been compromised and the offensive message was not posted by her.
• Soon after, the employee made a similar comment saying the resulting status update on her personal page was posted by a hacker.

Here is where there are some problems with this spin:

Chipotle had over 24 hours worth of comments posted on its Facebook Page from outraged patrons to respond to, and they failed to do so in a timely manner. Second, they slightly underestimated the savvy of their patrons and the power of the Internet. Here is what they posted on their discussion board about 5 hours ago:

Chipotle Mexican Grill
“We’ve been looking into this and it sounds like the cat post is not legitimate and may have been the result of a hack or an unauthorized use of someones personal account. If you still want to talk about all of this, please keep the language to PG or we’ll have to remove posts.”
5 hours ago · Report

Even though the employee’s message and its ensuing comments strand were deleted – snapshots had already been taken, saved and posted online for the world to remember.

As one Allfacebook.com commentor mentioned, if you looked at the employee’s wall posts, they agreed with another poster about the hacker story being false due to a Dec. 4th post by the employee insulting Chipotle customers. They also provided the link to the employee’s wall, however it looks like the employee’s personal Facebook Page has since been deactivated.

You may still be wondering why this is such a huge issue… Here’s why:

For close to 24 hours, the Chipotle Facebook page was assaulted by angry visitors demanding action be taken. Comment after comment, and not a hint of an admin response until the onslaught was in full swing. Situations such as these although rare are dangerous territory for a company’s reputation, because sends out the impression that there is a lack of concern as to what the public thinks. The loosely spun story involving a hacker, just added insult to an already festering injury.

They Should’ve Brought In a P[R]o

Over the next few hours since Chipotle’s admin last posted to the discussion board, which they created and titled “Cat,” they made two more posts stating:

“The statement of the cat sounds like it was not legitimate. If you would like to keep talking about it, please move to the discussion tab, and lets keep the language PG or we’ll have to take it down. Remember, our facebook wall is intended for broad-ranging discussion about Chipotle. -The Managment”

Two hours later:

“It doesn’t appear that there is anything to this cat story, though we have set up a discussion tab if you want to keep talking about it. Otherwise, we’d like to keep the wall for broader discussions about Chipotle. Thanks.”

[Note: I had to confirm these quotes via DigitalMarketinggirl.wordpress.com, because the Chipotle Facebook page was under a constant barrage of new messages. And after clicking, "older posts" for 30 minutes, I gave up and thank Digital Marketing Girl for having the information confirmed.]

The Questions Are Still Unanswered

It’s completely reasonable to agree that Chipotle cannot control what their employees post. But, what they can control is what is posted on their corporate page and how long it will take to respond, especially in a crisis situation. Furthermore, why continue to allow responses to be posted on an issue that should be handled at store-level?

Here’s another thing I don’t understand – the Facebook Administrator for Chipotle has the power to change the settings of the page until the controversy dies down. In other words, they can control how posts will go up. Plus, I can’t help but ask why are they are missing the crucial toggle keys that allow visitors to view comments by the admin, others and admin + others. Wouldn’t this function enable upset visitors the ability to read direct messages from corporate rather than those of upset and more than likely misinformed page visitors?

Sadly, I can keep going on about where Chipotle swerved off the beaten path of good PR and wound up in Crooked Damage Controlville, but I won’t. Instead I’ll leave you with the link to view the original chat strand from the employee as posted by Allfacebook.com, click here.

This is going to be yet another “to be continued” pieces …

I’d like to get your opinions, comments or anything you’d like to tell us regarding the Chipotle Cat Controversy. I understand anything involving animal cruelty is a touchy subject, with that said, let’s keep it clean and respectful for everyone.