The former staff of a Nebraska Burger King went viral for a sign announcing to management, “We all quit.”
Rachael Flores, the former general manager of the Lincoln, Neb., location, told a local ABC affiliate station that work conditions and upper management were the reasons that she and her colleagues decided to leave.
“We had just got really tired of upper management and them not coming to help and not caring about the employees,” she said, adding that she was the first to put in her two-week notice, and then eight of her co-workers did the same.
Flores reportedly started working at the fast-food restaurant in August 2020 after losing her job as a representative for Capital One. She was promoted to general manager in January after her former manager left.
“It was pretty hectic. They were already short-staffed [in August] and the general manager was pretty loud and crazy, very argumentative,” Flores told Today Food. “As I became general manager, it got more crazy. I had multiple different bosses.”
Flores also described working in the kitchen of the Burger King for weeks without air conditioning and with temperatures reaching more than 90 degrees. She said that when she confronted her higher-ups about the issues, they dismissed her as being a “baby,” according to the news outlet.
“It was causing a lot of issues with employees, they were getting dehydrated. … That took three or four weeks to get fixed. One of the days I was extremely delirious, I was very dehydrated,” she told Today Food, adding that she ended up in the hospital for her symptoms.
The viral sign that went up at the location over the weekend read, “We all quit. Sorry for the inconvenience.” It was taken down on Saturday.
“We also wanted to give a genuine apology to the customers because quite a few people have worked there for years,” Flores told Today Food. “One was there for 18, one was there for eight and another was there for seven, so they have been seeing a lot of the same customers for years. Part of it was a genuine apology for customers and the ‘We all quit’ was to upper management.”
Flores said she was fired over the weekend for allowing the sign to go up, just days before she was scheduled to leave her position.
A Burger King spokesperson told Today Food that they were aware of the situation.
“The work experience described at this location is not in line with our brand values,” the spokesperson reportedly said. “Our franchisee is looking into this situation to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.”