As you’ve likely noticed, this year has seen an unusual number of workers quitting service jobs in a trend that has been characterized as either a labor shortage or “The Great Resignation,” depending on who you ask.
And while we’ve seen a lot of discussion about what could be prompting so many employees to leave and what can be done to convince them to stay in their jobs , it’s not so often that we actually hear from the employees themselves why they couldn’t take it anymore.
Well, that insight has recently come in from a young man who was once the assistant general manager of a Wendy’s restaurant.
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Be advised that the video featured in this article contains explicit language.
On November 3, a man who goes by @mintjuul.666 on Tiktok uploaded a video explaining why a mass exodus happened at his store.
As you might expect, problems started with the influx of orders and general unpleasant turn that workers experienced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After about two months of dealing with these issues, the man noticed that staff started to leave in droves. Before long, his general manager, assistant general manager, and about six of his fellow shift managers would no longer be working at Wendy’s.
This led to his promotion to assistant general manager.
And since he had no general manager for about three months, it was essentially up to him to keep the store running.
In that time, he described some pretty unenviable working conditions.
In his words, “I was working 85 hours a week every week with no day off basically the whole three months. And I made $14.77 [per hour] as an AGM keeping the store up and running. “
But when his location finally did get a new GM, things only seemed to get worse.
Although he didn’t specify how, the man said that she managed to completely ruin the place within two weeks of her arrival.
As a result, all 34 people scheduled to work there wanted to quit and he couldn’t help but feel the same way.
He also reported receiving no help from the chain’s upper management during the three months he was running his restaurant himself.
Eventually, this worsening of an already difficult situation prompted him to tell everyone he was quitting.
Apparently, about 17 other workers took this as an opportunity to also jump ship, which meant their last day was going to be a little different.
After closing the restaurant at 8 pm, the quitting employees decided to set up a taco bar for themselves.
And as an apparent parting gift to the upper managers they left behind, the man also made a point of saying that they didn’t clean up the mess from this idea before they walked away for good.
People can only be pushed so far.
