Ordering A 'Soup Burrito' At Chipotle Is A Red Flag For Employees

Working at Chipotle is the same as any other fast-food job. You're still making food at the request of a customer, following their exact requests down to the letter in exchange for monetary gain. Much like any other fast-food job, when you're behind the counter, there's a good chance you've made some really weird stuff or encountered some pretty strange people — and chances are, when all was said and done, you're more willing to tell that customer to beat it than to come back soon.

One example of such an order comes from Reddit, where some employees (perhaps through gritted teeth) described the process of making a "quesarito," or a burrito that uses a cheese quesadilla as a wrapper. While the process itself wasn't too hard, it meant that employees had to waste time preparing a single special order. Cosmopolitan tells us that an annoying and common behavior some customers do is demand as many toppings as they can ask for into a burrito, causing it to "break" or tear apart due to the tortilla being unable to hold all of those fillings. Needless to say, this isn't only a hard item to make, but it makes a mess too.

On the subject of burritos and infuriating a Chipotle employee, we now come to the question of what exactly a "soup burrito" is. It's not so much "soup" as it is something that's more liquid than burrito.

If you're like any Chipotle fan, you can't have a burrito without dabbing a little bit of hot sauce on that bad boy. Maybe you like a nice big dollop of sour cream on it. In fact, let's just say that you're a really saucy type of person and you decide to order a burrito that has hot sauce, salsa, sour cream, and queso on it. Although you don't know it, you've just ordered yourself a soup burrito.

As a Chipotle employee explained to Mental Floss, a soup burrito is one so filled with various liquids and sauces like salsa, queso, and barbacoa that it becomes impossible to wrap. This is because all of the liquid condenses into a single, soupy mixture that seeps into the tortilla, either causing the resulting "soup" to drip out of the burrito or the tortilla to tear like a wet paper towel. It's this kind of burrito that causes many employees grief, considering the messy and complicated task of trying to wrap and serve it without ruining the burrito. 

"I've been telling GM for years we need to limit all liquids to 2 servings on burritos," wrote one employee on r/Chipotle. "We get too many negative surveys for soup burritos." While this was one of the highest-rated comments, it was far from the only negative comment about the practice. "Burrito, brown rice, black beans, chicken, green, sour cream, cheese ... soup burrito," sneered another employee sarcastically. "Don't blame this soup burrito on me. You scoop from the bottom and fail to strain. It's disgusting honestly."

Trying to eat an extra-soggy burrito as it drips and smears all over your hands and clothes isn't exactly anyone's idea of a good time. But it seems that burritos aren't the only thing that can become "soup" — although this may have been the fault of the employees.

Initially, TikTok user @_tiaramaria only had one complaint about her Chipotle experience: She wasn't getting enough sour cream for her bowl. However, upon asking for more sour cream, this user quickly realized, she may have been barking up the wrong tree. A viral video on her TikTok account showcases her order, a burrito bowl, absolutely drenched in sour cream. The bowl itself wasn't just covered, but instead almost swimming in a pool of sour cream as if it were Chipotle's bizarre idea of a soup. Whether or not this was some kind of prank or an innocent mistake is still unknown.

Strangely enough, @_tiaramaria isn't the only one to get an order like this. Although she certainly didn't request it this way, @emgwaciedawgie also wound up with a "sour cream soup" order. She also had no idea why someone would do this to a paying customer's order, but luckily she was able to see the funny side of the whole mess and even cracked jokes about the incident. "I want to know why the Chipotle worker who made my bowl hates me," she said. "What did I do to deserve this?"

Whether it's just someone who thinks the bowls need more sour cream or maybe someone who hates TikTok users, we'll probably never know. But for safety's sake, maybe just ask for some sour cream on the side next time.