Some Poor Guy Got Hundreds of Texts Demanding Free Chipotle

In its ongoing push to win customers back after the recent food-borne illness disaster, and for briefly closing all of its restaurants on Monday, Chipotle offered a coupon for a free burrito to anyone who texted the code "RAINCHECK" to the number, 888-222.

But while countless people were scoring free burritos, one innocent and rather unlucky man by the name of Hank Levine was inundated with text messages throughout the day from people who had mistakenly punched in his phone number, 888-2222, instead.

As reported by Tech Insider, the Washington D.C. technology attorney spent much of his day responding to hundreds of strangers who demanded a free Chipotle lunch. It all started around 9am Monday, when Levine received the first of many "RAINCHECK" texts, to which he replied with only a question mark out of curiosity -- totally unaware of the Chipotle deal. Moments later, the stranger texted back, saying, "'I want my burrito," and ultimately explained the burrito chain's promotion using a similar phone number. By then, he had already received more than 60 additional messages, according to the report.

As the avalanche of texts continued to blow up his phone, Levine's daughter-in-law tweeted about the miscommunication madness. She eventually received a response from Chipotle, which didn't seem to upset about people missing out on a free burrito. But then again, was typing the correct number really that hard?

It's unclear exactly how many texts Levine received by the time the promotion ended at 6pm, but we're just going to say he deserves more than just a free burrito for his trouble.

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Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and wonders how much free Chipotle they're going to get out of this. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.