If there’s one refrain we’ve all heard while surviving the novel coronavirus pandemic, it’s that we need to do right by essential workers. Now, that sentiment is absolutely the truth and still worth fighting for, even as more people become vaccinated. And, frankly, it’s still worth it even post-pandemic. The definition of who is actually an essential worker, however, seems to vary depending on who is speaking; medical staff, bus drivers, and teachers come up for most people, but not everyone considers the full extent of workers we’ve expected to show up during the pandemic. One example? Fast-food workers.

Even a little more broadly, we can consider all restaurant workers. We’ve seen reports of restaurants having a difficult time attracting food service workers, from waiters to cooks to managers. Eyes are now on a Burger King in Lincoln, Nebraska, after employees put up letters on one side of the marquee outside the restaurant reading: “We all quit. Sorry for the inconvenience.” The marquee went viral, and now some former workers are speaking out about their experiences at the restaurant.

“They have gone through so many district managers since I’ve been GM [General Manager],” Rachael Flores, who served as a general manager since January, told local outlet KLKN in an interview. “No one has come to the store to help me out. They’re so in and out.” Flores, as well as eight other employees, had put in her two weeks notice before putting up the message. Flores noted she began working for Burger King in August 2020, after losing her job at Capitol One during the pandemic. She was promoted to general manager in January. 

Flores told the outlet she was working 50 to 60 hours a week because the restaurant was short-staffed, with two people scheduled for breakfast and only three or four people working during lunch hours, which, to Flores, wasn’t “completely safe” in addition to overworking the employees. She described her employees as being “run ragged” and said the situation wasn’t fair to them either.

She alleged that she had to go to the hospital after becoming dehydrated from the lack of working air conditioning in the kitchen. She said temperatures reached mid-90 degrees at one point and the air conditioning had been out for weeks. According to Flores, after she talked to her manager about the air conditioning issue and being late for a phone meeting because she was at the hospital, she was told she was being a “baby.” 

In speaking to TODAY Food, Flores described the heat issue in more detail, saying that at the beginning of summer, the heat was “causing a lot of issues with employees, they were getting dehydrated.” She claimed it took a few weeks for the air conditioning to be fixed, and that one day, she herself was “extremely delirious” from dehydration. She told the outlet she ended up getting an IV at the hospital.

Kylee Johnson, one former employee who said she had been working two jobs and going to school full-time, also spoke to KLKN, saying they only stayed at the job to “help Rachael out,” describing her as a best friend. “I just want to help her as much as I can,” Johnson said. “I knew what was going on staffing-wise. We were just waiting for more people to come then and we got nobody.”

And as for the letters on the sign that have since gone viral? It started off as a joke on a Friday. By Saturday, before the restaurant opened, they changed the letters on one side of the sign. 

“Just kind of a laugh to upper management,” Flores said, adding she didn’t think “anybody was going to notice it.” In speaking to TODAY, she added it was also an apology to customers, explaining that some of the folks who quit had worked at that location for years, and therefore customers would likely miss them.

“One was there for 18, one was there for eight, and another was there for seven,” Flores told the outlet in reference to the longtime staff. “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 after a photo of the sign went viral on Facebook, she received a call from upper management telling her to take it down. Her boss told her to hand in her keys later the same day and she was fired. The Burger King location is still open.

You can check out an interview with Johnson and Flores below.

YouTube Video