On the Border, R.I.P

June 12^th, 2026 marked the last day of operations for all company-owned On the Border restaurants. However, a handful of franchised locations will remain open.

The year before, On the Border had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Officially, the death of On the Border was due to the chain’s increasing competition with the fast casual restaurant format. Restaurants such as Chipotle, Panera, and Cava all operate in this space, although there are many others. Likewise, as a dine-in restaurant, On the Border had struggled to compete due to this change in customer behavior.

Many years ago, I too was an On the Border employee. Likewise, I take no joy in the plethora of employees that will inevitably lose their jobs due to this situation. However, I am glad to finally see the end of these corporate-owned On the Border locations. This is due to my many negative experiences while working there. The end of this company also brings a sense of closure to my time there—even though I left decades ago.

For the good memories I have at On the Border, these are far outweighed by the vast number of systemic issues I’d encounter during my nearly two year tenure there. Overwhelmingly, the corporate culture I witnessed at both the Overland Park and Lawrence locations were defined by nonsensical corporate policies, management’s gas-lighting of employees, and their support of abusive behavior.

Above: On of the Two On the Border locations I used to work at

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I’d first write about On the Border in The 14 Chip Policy, which is a satirical take based on On the Border’s policy that limited the number of chips customers were allowed to have per bowl. On the Border did have a real corporate policy limiting the number of chips customers were allowed per bowl—and management enforced the policy. It sounds too ridiculous to believe such a policy ever existed at any Mexican restaurant, but On the Border wasn’t just any Mexican restaurant. This policy was also emblematic of On the Border’s refusal to respond to reason.

Management actually reprimanded me on several occasions for what they told me was for giving customers too many chips, which in almost all cases was simply filling the bowl up all the way. I’d have multiple conversations telling management about how many customers had complained about the lack of chips in the bowl and how operations were being negatively affected due to the significant increase in trips to the kitchen entirely for chip refills.

Management continued to ignore me and never backed down on the policy for as long as I was there. We also would later have an emergency meeting at the Lawrence location, with the store manager telling us that the “chips and salsa costs were getting out of control.”

In this meeting, she blamed the servers for this situation, stating that that servers were eating too many chips and specifically mentioned the problem being related to servers snacking out of the chip bins. Then, a few hours after this emergency meeting, I’d then watch the store manager eating chips directly out of the chip bin. In this moment, the level of hypocrisy was staggering.

Although, as bad as the chip policy was, and as frustrating as it was dealing with it, there were far more serious issues going on at the company. Something I’d find out early on about On the Border’s company culture was that they believed strongly in the concept of The Customer is Always Right—with the notable exception being the chip policy, since this policy was anti-customer.

However, I think in On the Border’s mind, this policy had been necessary to maintain profitability, even though there could have been other better ways to approach it, such as increasing prices on other menu items, if the issue with chips and salsa costs being high had ever been an actual issue to begin with. There’s no way to confirm or deny this was the case, as we did not have access to any financial costs the restaurant was incurring.

Something else that was a major source of conflict at On the Border was the online customer portal. It was here where customers could log in to a computer and then leave comments on their service. Each comment was then tied back to the server, which I think was based on the receipt number entered in the portal.

Each week, On the Border management would then print out all of the comments from the last week and then post them on the kitchen walls. Each server was assigned an employee ID number, so employee names were not associated with the comments. However, you could figure out what comments were about which employee if you knew that person’s employee ID number.

The first major problem with this system was that there was no way for servers to respond to these comments. As someone who was majoring in Journalism at this time, this was deeply problematic, as journalism teaches you that there are always at least two sides to every story. This was especially an issue with negative comments, which I’d later estimated accounted for between 60-70% of the comments.

The other issue was that since there was no moderation of the comments, customers could leave any comment that they wished. Oftentimes, customers would leave exaggerated accounts of events, or in some cases, just outright fabricate what had happened.

Also, being an online anonymous platform on the customer-side, this also only encouraged this abusive behavior. This is also something we have seen manifest in platforms such as 4 Chan, X, Instagram, & others—with 4 Chan being particularly bad in this regard. As a result, the hacking collective Anonymous would later form to directly counter the systemic issues of abuse on 4 Chan.

Management was also particularly aggressive on having conversations about negative customer comments. Servers would then have to verbally respond, with management always taking the customer’s side—no matter how outlandish or ridiculous the comments were. Likewise, servers were simply assumed to be “guilty until proven innocent,” with no real attempt by management to think critically about what had happened at the table.

There was one week in particular that still stands out. It was then that I had a conversation with management over what one customer had stated was the worst service they’d ever received in a restaurant. However, this was also the same week that another customer had commented that I had given them the best service they had ever received in a restaurant. Likewise, I then asked management to explain to me how it was possible that during the course of this week that I’d been both the worst and best servers that these two groups of customers had ever had. I did acknowledge that there were nights when I did a better job than others, although I had no explanation for how I had completely lost my abilities as a server over the last seven days.

This system was a constant source of conflict between managers and servers, and nothing positive ever came out of these interactions. I also at one point informed management that the majority of all of the comments were negative.

It took me around a month to the figure this out, but it was easy to do. All you had to do was read the comments and then ascribe a value of either positive or negative to them. You just then needed to count if there were more positive comments or more negative comments. Each time I’d go through this, the data always skewed negative.

After a while, I realized that this was unfortunately inevitable for several reasons. The first reason is that when someone goes into a restaurant, the expectation is that the service is going to be good. In the vast majority of instances, this is the case. Likewise, most of the comments should be positive if the vast majority of people are having their expectations of good service being met. However, this is not how people operate.

No one is going to be incentivized to log in to an online portal to leave a comment stating, “My expectations were met.” This is because this is the expectation. However, if those expectations are blown out of the water, then someone would likely want to log in to an online portal to leave a comment about just how great the service was. However, the probability of this happening is low, as you’re competing against every trip to a restaurant that person has had in their lifetime. We are talking about thousands upon thousands of trips you’re competing against, and unfortunately every server cannot be the best server ever for everyone every day.

However, there’s a much higher incentive to log in and leave a comment if you had a negative experience, as in this case, your expectations were not met, and you’d likely want to avoid a repeat of a similar situation. This is how we are wired as people, as we over-ascribe value to negative experiences and downplay the positive ones. Likewise, abusive customer behavior continued online, although it was the in-restaurant behavior that would far exceed these online comments.

There were many legitimate issues that customers raised, as we were not perfect—myself included. Oftentimes it would be something simple like forgetting a drink at the bar, leaving food in the window for too long, taking too long to come back to the table, or forgetting to bring out a water.

However, there were more serious issues that happened far less frequently, which included things like dropping a tray, inputting the wrong item to the computer, or not inputting an item at all. However, I can confidently say that overall we did a great job. These mistakes would often result in management comping items for customers, which was the right thing to do, even though it cost us servers a lot of money. This was due to our base pay being $2.13/hr.

However, there were other times when a customer would make a mistake—by ordering the wrong item, being disappointed due to not reading the item description, or due to not asking a question about an item that was unclear, as well as many other scenarios.

These were difficult situations to handle, although I think we did a good job in most situations. Typically, customers were understanding and we’d often re-make items or bring out things at no-charge, despite it not being anything we were at fault for.

However, there were other situations where customers were simply unreasonable. Although these situations were much rarer than the negative online customer comments, often times these customers would outright lie about what happened.

Some examples included customers stating they ordered one item and received another, grossly exaggerating or lying about how long the food took to get out, or stating that they ordered items that weren’t received, which is due to them never being ordered in the first place.

During these times, management would often have to intervene. I was always careful to be honest about what had happened before dispatching management to the table. I also always wrote everything down, so there was a written record that I could always refer back to for disputes.

Some servers insisted on memorizing everything, although I think this increased errors, and I never did this as a result. There was also no way to prove something was or wasn’t ordered with no written record of it. It was a system of checks and balances against what had or hadn’t been put into the computer for the order.

What was upsetting about these highly problematic customers, was management still always took the customer’s side—no matter how extreme or abusive the customer behavior was. In my nearly two years working at On the Border, there was never a situation I witnessed where a customer was asked to leave. This was despite the fact that there were multiple instances of abusive customer behavior, which were not only tolerated, but by which management would reward by apologizing to the customer and giving the customer comped items on their bill.

The most egregious situation I witnessed during my time at On the Border was one where a co-worker warned me about a customer before I was even able to make it to the table to drop off waters. It was then that my co-worker told me that I needed to be careful with this particular woman due to what had happened the last time she was in. He told me that at that time, this customer had gotten into a massive fight with the store manager over the order.

On that night, she had become increasingly aggressive and then started to curse out the manager. She then began making highly personal attacks against the store manager—with this tirade devolving into a full-on character assassination.

After this time, the store manager, who was a woman in her 40s, then broke down and started crying due to the viciousness of the attacks. The customer ended up receiving several items for free after this happened. Perhaps even more telling was that no one told her that she wasn’t welcome back at On the Border—not even the store manager, who had been reduced to tears.

When I asked my co-worker what the issues were with the order, he unequivocally told me that there were no issues with the order, and this woman had pulled similar stunts on multiple occasions. We both later agreed that this person should have been asked to leave each time, and after the last incident, she should have been told to never come back to the restaurant.

As a result of the tip-off from my co-worker, I doubled down on making sure everything on the order was accurate and delivered in a timely matter. I made sure to write everything down, which I did on every order anyways, and I then even verbally confirmed the order with the customer. However, despite this, and despite there being no issues with her order, she immediately started complaining about the taquitos before I set them down on the table, due to what she claimed was due to them being burned.

To be clear, the taquitos were burned, although on the ends, which I’d explained to her was due to the fact that they needed to be made this way so everything didn’t fall out when you picked them up. She refused to accept this explanation, so I then told her that I was going to confirm this with the kitchen. After the kitchen confirmed that this is how they were supposed to be cooked, I headed back to the table. After reiterating what I’d told the customer, she still refused to accept this and then requested a manager.

Following this, I explained the situation to the store manager. This was also the same store manager who this same customer had berated to such an extent the previous time she’d been in, that she’d made her cry. However, at least this time, the customer was more civil. Although, she was still irate over the taquitos, in addition to some other fictitious issues she’d created.

At the end of the tirade, the store manager then comped several items, even though the customer was in the wrong. I was pissed, as here we were again, where On the Border was reinforcing abusive behavior by giving this woman free items, which would only encourage her to come back and to repeat the cycle of abusive behavior.

These situations negatively impacted staff morale and also ended up costing the restaurant money with regards to having to give away free food for items that should have been paid for. Unfortunately, this pattern of defending abusers extended beyond just customers.

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I used to work with a server named Phil who had quite the reputation. To start, Phil was known around the Lawrence On the Border as a serial sexual harasser. I’d heard from a co-worker that he’d actually asked out the entirety of the female staff over his tenure at the restaurant. Multiple people had complained about the behavior, although he’d faced no actual consequences.

Something else Phil liked doing was showing up to work drunk. This happened on several occasions while I worked at the Lawrence On the Border. There was even one day that Phil showed up to work so drunk that he could barely speak.

This situation was becoming a major issue, as customers and staff couldn’t understand what the hell Phil was saying, as his voice was only a step above whisper level. Several servers, myself included, had then suggested that Phil go home, since he was barely able to perform the job. His eyes were also barely open as he arrived at the table. Despite this, Phil continued working, or attempting to work, for another couple hours or so. Eventually, he did pack it in, although he never should have been at work that day and a manager should have at the very least asked him to go home.

I came in one day and I asked one of my co-workers where Phil was, as I was expecting to see him since he used to work this particular day of the week. My co-worker then informed me that Phil had been fired.

My immediate thoughts were that it must have been due to the repeated sexual harassment or for repeatedly showing up to work drunk. I then asked my co-worker what Phil had been fired for, and he informed me that it was because Phil had been writing in his own tips on credit card tabs that Phil thought were unreasonable. For instance, if he’d received a $2 tip, Phil would just add a “1” to the beginning, turning this $2 tip into a $12 tip. Apparently, this had been going on for at least a year. Eventually however, someone called in to dispute a tip that they’d left, stating the amount was far higher than what they’d left.

Ultimately, On the Border made the right call to fire Phil, although it shouldn’t have taken credit card fraud in order to fire him.

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Eventually, every issue piled up to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. My stress level was extreme. I soon put in my two weeks notice.

In nearly every important situation, management made the wrong call. I was also tired of being ignored any time I brought up something important—whether that was the negative customer impact that was created by rationing chips, their refusal to stand up to abusive customer behavior, or their refusal to stand up to abusive employee behavior. I had no voice here—and as I talked more to other servers, their experiences had also been similar. It was a toxic work environment and I was drowning in it.

When I first read that On the Border had filed for bankruptcy, it was a huge sigh of relief. The first thing that I thought was that it was good riddance that another abusive corporation was finally shutting down. A year later, as I read that the last corporate On the Border location had closed, I finally now have closure to this story.

I did my best to stand up for what was right—whether that was by putting too many chips in a chip bowl in defiance of On the Border’s official policy limiting chips in a bowl, standing up to abusive customers, or for defending our staff in times when we did nothing wrong.

On that last time I walked out that door of that Lawrence On the Border, I felt like I’d lost. I felt that I’d been right on these important issues, but at the end of the day, I was the one now looking for a new job. I don’t regret the decision, although it was really hard to walk away knowing things would likely continue as business as usual.

I learned a lot from my time at On the Border. I learned that sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re right, or how loud your voice is. You can scream as loud as you can, although if someone else’s voice is drowning yours out, then no one will hear it. For On the Border, that voice was their corporate policies and what management decided was right. That voice was also ultimately one that sided with abusers and abusive behavior.

However, the single biggest lesson I learned from On the Border is that the customer is not always right. A better slogan is that the customer is usually right. Likewise, there are times when the customer is wrong, and it’s during these times that it’s management’s job to do the right thing.

When a customer is abusive towards staff, it’s management’s job to tell that customer that they need to leave. When a customer establishes a pattern of abuse towards staff, it’s management’s job to tell that customer to never come back. When management so spectacularly fails at these tasks, everyone loses—expect for that abusive person, and that’s no way to run a business.