‘We all quit’: Burger King restaurant staff quit en masse as more people ditch jobs post-Covid

Signs read ‘WE ALL QUIT’ and ‘SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE’

A Burger King restaurant in Nebraska has had a message on its sign outside the restaurant go viral on social media after disgruntled staff spoke out.

The poster above the restaurant in the city of Lincoln read, “WE ALL QUIT” and “SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”.

Former general manager Rachel Flores told ABC 8 News about the staff’s decision.

She said,  “They wanted to put up a sign to say, you know sorry there’s really not going to be anyone here.”

“Just kind of a laugh to upper management. That got put up yesterday before we opened, and I didn’t think anybody was going to notice it, because we did just one sign, and then it went pretty crazy on Facebook. I got a call from my upper management and they told me I needed to take it down.”

Ms Flores said that she had only been in the job since the beginning of the year due to the high level of staff turnover.

“They have gone through so many district managers since I’ve been GM,” she said. “No one has come to the store to help me out. They’re so in and out.”

Ms Flores was ultimately fired over the sign that went up over the weekend of 10 July. It is believed that the location is still open and struggling with low staffing levels.

According to the two former employees who spoke to ABC 8, there are similar problems to the ones they outlined at other branches of the burger chain across the city.

Currently, there is a national shortage of service workers as people have chosen either to leave the industry or don’t feel safe returning to crowded indoor spaces amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In June, the sector was down 2.2 million jobs as people are hesitant to return a job with such low pay and often no employer provided healthcare provision.

“We’ve been through a period of so much stress and uncertainty, and it’s made people really pause and consider what they want their lives to look like as things move back toward normal,” Alison Green, work blogger at Ask A Manager, told PBS News Hour.