My New Year’s Resolution: I won’t boycott Chipotle, Jet Blue or any business based on your Facebook post, but I will boycott you

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This is for all who’ve posted on Facebook this week telling me I must boycott Chipotle because you believe a pair of New York employees raised their hands and refused to serve a group of NYPD cops and that the store won’t serve food to any police officers. It’s also for those outraged and calling for a boycott of Jet Blue because the airline has been providing flights for cops to attend the funerals of two murdered NYPD officers.

In addition, this post is for all of you who get so worked up each and every day and blindly hit the share button without first engaging your brain, reading an entire post, checking the source of the information to see if it’s even true and then fully thinking through whether your call to action is really the appropriate remedy for what has occurred.

I fully realized before I even started writing that those who really need to read this post probably won’t even get this far. It’s likely they are already outraged and calling for a boycott of my website. But I’m urging all of you to read on. Do so for the health and well being of our country and our way of life.

Consider this not so much my New Year’s resolution but more like an intervention. You really need to get this thing under control.

THE MOB MENTALITY

I’ve never eaten at Chipotle, but I’m going to start buying their food to do my part in making up for any business lost by this foolish call for a boycott. I encourage you to do the same. When I first saw the phrase “boycott Chipotle” I figured this was an anti-immigration protest over bringing Mexican food across the border.

To me, ruining someone’s business based mostly on rumor and innuendo, mixed in with just a little bit of truth, is the electronic version of the people who burned down Ferguson. I’m aware the Ferguson arsonists committed a crime that had the potential to kill people, but my point is this all comes from the same type of mob mentality. Don’t for a moment think you can claim any moral high ground because you aren’t physically lighting a match in your effort to ruin someone’s business.

DON’T LET THE TRUTH GET IN THE WAY OF A GOOD BOYCOTT

Is it really too much to ask that you find out what really happened in this Brooklyn Chipolte before telling everyone they shouldn’t eat in any of the chain’s stores? When I read the first post calling for a boycott I didn’t immediately hit the “share’ button. I hit “search”.

What I found is that the nuclear option has been ordered because just one of Chipolte’s 45,000 employees, in just one of its 1600 restaurants, put their hands over their head. No police officers were refused service. It wasn’t a protest by a group of store employees. It isn’t store policy. It isn’t company policy. In fact, many people have been writing me saying Chipolte is a very public safety friendly company.

Now, I can’t swear that the following two articles are 100 percent accurate, but unlike the posts calling for the boycott, these articles actually cite facts and sources. The New York Post confirms the incident involved only one employee acting on his own and that the company investigated, took action and apologized to NYPD:

Nine of New York’s Finest walked into the Montague Street restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn around 6:15 p.m. on Dec. 16 and were greeted by a Chipotle employee who raised his hands up, a gesture that has become a symbol of anti-police sentiment across the country.

The burrito shop is close to the 84th Precinct, where slain Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu worked before they were gunned down on Dec. 20.

“We work very hard to ensure that every customer in our restaurants feels welcome and is treated with respect. Clearly, the actions of this crew member undermined that effort,” co-CEOs Steve Ells and Monty Moran said in a statement Monday.

The website Snopes.com makes an effort to separate social media fact from social media fiction. They do a very good job dissecting this whole incident and how it turned into a call for a nationwide boycott. Snopes.com also shared the correspondence they had with a Chipolte representative:

On Dec. 16, a group of eight NY police officers came to one our Brooklyn restaurants at about 6:15 PM, and before approaching the counter saw a single Chipotle employee raise her hands in what appears to have been a spontaneous, unplanned gesture of protest directed at the police. The group of officers then left without ordering food. In no way was this statement from our employee consistent with our culture and values. Quite the contrary. We work very hard to make all of our customers feel welcome in our restaurants.

Since being notified of this incident, we have conducted a review to determine what happened, including review of video footage from security cameras and interviews with our restaurant team. We have also taken appropriate actions with regard to the employee involved, and reiterated to our operations teams the importance of making all of our customers feel welcome in our restaurants. No exceptions. Finally, we have apologized to many of the people who have contacted us regarding this issue.

Above all, we apologize to the officers involved. We serve law enforcement officials in our restaurants around the country every day, and we appreciate their service.

Quite simply, this incident should never have happened.

I challenge those who want me to join your boycott to read these articles and then show me verified information, from a credible source, that confirms something different occurred. I posted this same challenge on Facebook two days ago. The post got a lot of reaction, but so far, no one has any facts that dispute the Snopes.com and New York Post versions of the story.

IS ANY OF THIS REALLY BOYCOTT WORTHY?

Does anyone out there actually believe a business can control the actions of all its employees 100 percent of the time? The best an employer can do is make a good effort to hire someone they think will do the job well, train them and then react responsibly when that employee brings unwanted attention to the company by their actions. When did it become a core American value to destroy something someone has built based on the actions of someone they really can’t control?

For those who now know the real facts about the Chipotle incident but are still seething over this great insult hurled by toward the police by this awful company, just to be on the safe side, maybe you shouldn’t patronize ANY business that employs people who disagree with your political views. If that passion in you is so strong, I have to assume you’ve completely stopped watching any NFL games because of the recent police protests by some of the players.

In addition, I imagine every fast food joint and just about every business in the country has at least some employees who sympathize with the protests that have cropped up since Ferguson. And many of these businesses have people who actually marched in the streets. Should we also start a boycott on every one of those businesses until they get rid of those employees?

I know what I just wrote sounds really, really stupid. But so does calling for a boycott after just one person raised their hands over their head. And so does calling for a boycott of Jet Blue because they showed compassion after the murders of two police officers (at least that insensitive and stupid reason for a boycott was based on the company’s actual policy).

OUTRAGE SEEMS TO BE WHAT WE DO BEST

Our willingness to become outraged by taking at face value what we read on the Internet and social media is a bigger threat to our way of life than almost any of the hot button issues political extremists on all sides send our way each day. We have long been a woefully misinformed nation and are getting so much worse by the minute because of this inability to control our emotions, take a deep breath, conduct even the most basic search for the truth and then respond in a sensible way that’s proportional to the event that occurred.

We are now programmed to immediately pounce based on whatever crap scrolling on the screen excites us because it fits neatly into our own political agenda or bias. We just aren’t interested in opening our minds to understand opposing views. Our default position is to take the smallest slight and create a giant scandal from it. Just look at what happens when a comedian Tweets something we find offensive or someone with the wrong political view is scheduled to speak on a college campus.

There is very little questioning or critical thinking involved as we process the images and words that rapidly pass by our eyes. Instead, we act purely on emotion. It’s because of this that we are so easily manipulated.

Whether it’s a Facebook post calling for a boycott, or one telling us we aren’t going to believe what some political leader did now, it’s all based on the same fear and loathing and scare tactics that have long been used in political advertising.

We no longer have healthy debates on issues. We no longer try to forge a reasonable path toward solutions to some of the serious problems we face. Instead, we demonize people and even fast food restaurants and airlines to forward someone’s agenda. The politicians have known for a long time that avoiding substance and focusing on these emotional, hot button issues is the best way to win an election. It’s also the best way to get us riled on social media and the Internet. But I can assure you, in the long run, it’s not what’s best for you and for me.

REMEMBER, HIT “SEARCH” BEFORE “SHARE”

I know it’s much more difficult than ever to be a good and responsible consumer of news and information. I know it’s so much easier to immediately share a post along with your outrage than it is to take a few moments to read and discover the real facts. I know you get a great sense of satisfaction when you find a post that fits with your own personal view, to be able to instantly tell the world, “See I told you so!” And I know it must provide a great feeling of power to hit just one button on your phone or computer to start or join a campaign to shut down someone’s livelihood.

But I also know, unless we soon develop a healthy dose of both skepticism and a real hunger for facts over emotion, that we will continue to be easily manipulated. To me, that’s a lot bigger issue than one guy, at one fast food restaurant in Brooklyn, raising his hands above his head. If you agree, please join me in my campaign to search before you share, to put facts before emotion and to boycott all social media boycotts.