An Ohio woman who threw a burrito at a Chipotle employee in a fit of rage and then blamed her behavior on being a Gemini has served the unusual sentence imposed on her by a court.
Rosemary Hayne, 39, was caught on camera throwing a Mexican meal at Emily Russell, 26, the store manager at Chipotle in Parma, Cleveland, last September. She was unhappy with the wait and the food.
The volatile customer pleaded guilty to assault in December and Judge Timothy Gilligan sentenced her to a 20-hour work week at a fast food restaurant as punishment.
Hayne said Grub Street from New York Magazine that she had never thrown food – or any other object – at anyone before and gave a bizarre explanation for why she made an exception for Russell.
“She pulled the Italian Twins out of me,” Hayne said. “I’m 40 years old and no one has ever done that, not even my husband.”
Judge Gilligan said Hayne’s sentence was “not about punishment” but about “gaining empathy”.
“You didn’t get your burrito bowl the way you liked it and now you react like this?” he told Hayne during the sentencing.
“These are not real Housewives of Parma. This behavior is not acceptable.”
But the punishment does not seem to have had the desired effect.
Firstly, Hayne had worked in fast food restaurants before, so she knew what it was like when customers placed their orders on the table.
“That’s what I get instead of going to jail — amen, thank you,” Hayne told Grub Street. “Let me go to Burger King and be their b****, for real.”
Hayne’s first step was to find a job at a fast food restaurant. That was a tough call, as she wanted to bring up the burrito bowl incident rather than risk finding out about it during the interview process via the viral video.
“I was completely honest with people,” she said. “And I got trashed at least seven times.”
Hayne was sentenced to two months’ work at a fast food chain instead of a prison sentence after pleading guilty to one count of assault
Russell told the court she was traumatized by the attack and had to leave her job at Chipotle, where she had worked for more than four years.
In January this year, Hayne got a job at a Burger King. She said she approached the job with a positive attitude and only had to deal with one noisy customer.
The customer wanted four mozzarella sticks with eight packets of marinara sauce. When she was told she would have to pay more for the extra sauce, she protested.
Hayne’s Burger King colleagues made the woman pay for extra sauce and everyone went about their daily business. However, it seems Hayne is still siding with the customer.
“I’d be at the drive-through and say, ‘Here’s your eight fucking sauces, have a nice day,’” she said.
“I know the customer is always right — whether they’re wrong or not, give them what they want. That burger doesn’t cost you a s***. It doesn’t cost that company a s***.”
Hayne also defended her own outburst rather than learning from it, saying the one-minute video took the violent interaction out of context.
A viral video shows Hayne yelling at Russell at a Chipotle earlier this year and throwing an entire burrito bowl at her face
The Chipotle employee also said she remade Hayne’s order twice and added extra egg whites, but Hayne came back and abruptly threw the bowl in her face
She said that if an extended version had been caught, “you’d see me waiting 35 minutes. You’d see me say something to Emily that wasn’t rude or anything. You’d see her talk to me rudely.”
“I wish I could post that,” she added.
Hayne said even the officers who came to her home agreed with her about the fast food place, saying she should have gone to the Chipotle next door.
“When the police came to my house, and I swear to God, the first thing they said to me was, ‘You know you made a mistake going to that Chipotle — that Chipotle sucks!’” Hayne told Grub Street.
Hayne’s attorney interrupted this comment, adding that “none of these arguments are defenses,” while Hayne agreed that she was “absolutely wrong” when she marketed her chicken burrito bowl.
She also shared that the bowl contained an all-beige outfit: white rice, chicken, sour cream, and cheese.
Russell said Chipotle did not support him after the attack and that it was “mentally and physically tough”
However, Russell was satisfied with the sentence.
“She didn’t get punished, so she’s going to learn how to work in fast food and hopefully it will be good,” the Chipotle worker said.