A Burger King Employee who worked for 27 years without a single day off was recently the subject of a massively successful GoFundMe campaign after his decades of service netted him a hastily thrown together gift bag.
In recent years, a multitude of people throughout the internet have become protective of fast food and other service workers to an unprecedented degree.
And ever since the pandemic emerged, we can see that this is especially true when those employees unwittingly star in a viral video after being berated by problem customers.
Some of these cases have suddenly seen the worker in question come into thousands of dollars thanks to the sudden generosity of an army of strangers. And the latest person to find themselves in the internet’s good graces attracted the attention of celebrities and his outraged peers alike after his employers gave him a unsatisfactory reward for 27 years of perfect attendance.
And while this unpredictable reversal of fortune has left him unsure what to do next, it’s also brought him even more unexpected blessings along the way.
On June 20, a Las Vegas Burger King employee named Kevin Ford uploaded a TikTok featuring the reward he received for never missing a day of work in 27 years.
He said that in addition to being treated to a chocolate cake, he was given this string backpack with a movie ticket, a lanyard, a plastic Starbucks coffee cup, two pens, two rolls of Lifesavers, and a bag of Reese’s Pieces.
Throughout the video, he thanked the people responsible multiple times and said that this gift made him feel appreciated.
But while Ford himself may have been grateful for the gift, enough of his viewers considered it an insultingly low-effort way to reward his service that his video ended up going viral.
Many commenters asked why he was continuing to work for a company that didn’t seem to value his dedication much and their questions were answered by his daughter Seryna in the GoFundMe campaign she launched.
She mentioned that he started working there after gaining custody of her and her older sister.
He then stayed on as his family grew due to the health insurance provided by a unionized employer.
As she wrote, “He is coming up on retirement age and leaving would cost him his retirement.”
But while she made it clear that neither she nor Ford were expecting the campaign to result in much money, donations continue to pour in by the time of this writing.
Global News reported that the campaign had initially requested $200 so Ford could visit his grandchildren as neither his daughter nor they had seen him in about four years.
Yet the day wasn’t even out before it became clear that this would turn out to be an incredibly modest goal.
After a flurry of donations from over 12,000 people and a $5,000 contribution from David Spade came in, the fundraiser would end up securing over $367,000 and that number is likely to get even higher.
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Not only that, but Ford would actually get the chance to reunite with Seryna and his grandchildren during an appearance on the Today Show.
And in addition to posting grateful updates and thank you videos on TikTok, Ford would later share his feelings about the tearful reunion with Fox11, saying, “I’ve been crying for all these days as it is and of course, I’m crying live on TV again seeing my grandbabies.”
Despite the sudden burst of good fortune, however, it seems Ford has no plans to stop working as hard as he has been all along.
As he told Fox11, “You never know, it’s day to day but I haven’t thought of anything to do with that money except to visit my grandkids for a while and maybe put some up for their college, but I’m not even thinking about that. I’m just working.”
h/t: Fox11
