Every spring, Joseph Heidgen
picks up empty planters from the Chipotle Mexican Grill
in Geneva and returns them filled with flowers.
In previous
years, the restaurant always paid him within a month. This
year, all he got was excuses.
Heidgen, who owns Shady Hill
Gardens in Elburn, said he delivered the planters filled
with petunias, coleus and sweet potato vine on June 1,
along with an invoice for $333.43. When Chipotle hadn't
sent the check in July, Heidgen started calling.
The
manager of the restaurant, he said, was always nice and promised
to cut the check soon.
When it still hadn't arrived in October, Heidgen e-mailed
What's Your Problem?
"It gets to you after a while," Heidgen said . "To jerk
somebody around because [they're] a smaller company doesn't
seem right."
To add insult to injury, he said, he drives by the restaurant
frequently on his way to work and sees the planters he
arranged.
"They're beautiful," Heidgen said.
The folks at Chipotle agree.
Just hours after the Problem Solver called, a spokesman
for the restaurant chain, the company's Chicago-based operations
manager, Ed Berg, called Heidgen and apologized. Berg gave
Heidgen a credit card number to pay off the debt, which
had increased to $357.94 with finance charges. Berg also
left his cell and home phone numbers in case there were
further problems.
Berg later called the Problem Solver to explain what happened.
"Sometimes I guess these things can fall through the cracks,
and we don't stay on top of things," he said. "That's not
like us."
Berg said he had visited the Geneva restaurant a few days
earlier and noticed the planters outside.
"They're just beautiful," he said. "I even commented to
those guys, 'Gosh, they are really nice.'"
He said he had no idea at that time that the planters had
not been paid for.
Heidgen said that before the Problem Solver's intervention,
he had called a Chipotle official at the company's accounting
center in Ohio five times to inquire about the check, but
he never received a call back.
"That's unforgivable," Berg said. "This is something that
should have been handled a long time ago...I know it won't
happen again. We live and learn."
So does Heidgen. After
waiting all summer for his check, he said he doubts he'd
provide planters to Chipotle again if asked. While the
payment was nice, it should have come months ago, he said.
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