Man bombarded by texts from people looking for free Chipotle

WASHINGTON -- Chipotle closed all of its locations Monday for several hours to educate employees on new food safety measures after the recent E. coli outbreak.

In an effort to earn back some trust with people who stopped eating there because of the outbreak -- or were just inconvenienced by the closure -- the company offered a free burrito to anyone who texted "raincheck" to 888-222 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

But if you add an extra 2 to that number, you get the cell phone of Washington, D.C., area lawyer Henry Levine.

Levine got dozens of texts from people he didn't know demanding a free burrito.

In an interview with Tech Insider, Levine said the texts starting coming in at around 9 a.m. this morning. Eventually, he learned about the promotion and has been responding to most of the texts to tell the person they have the wrong number. However, Tech Insider reports some people did not take the news too kindly.

At one point, Levine even went to a nearby Chipotle location to show the manager what was happening. The response was probably not what he was expecting.

"The manager shrieked and called everybody else over to look at my cell phone," Levine told Tech Insider. "The Chipotle staff were concerned about the 50 or 60 people who thought they were going to get burritos, but now aren't."

According to Levine's daughter in law Dorry Levine, Chipotle is aware of the mix-up and Levine will get some gift cards for his troubles.

Henry might not be the only person with this problem. As he tells Tech Insider, there could be an 888-2222 number in every area code getting the same erroneous texts he is.

"There could be another 200 Hank Levine's out there getting these texts instead of Chipotle."