Dollar’s best-performing general manager has been fired for complaining about his infernal working conditions at TikTok.
Mary Gundel, 33, began recording her Retail Store Manager series at her March 28 store in Tampa, Florida.
In her videos, she claims that the retailer has reduced the working hours of employees and left tired supervisors to unpack mountains of destructive shipments on their own without overtime.
Gundel talks about how the fast-growing discount chain routinely underfunds its stores, leaving congested employees to deal with unhappy customers who sometimes barely make it through aisles full of boxes with no one to unpack them.
Gundel, who earns $ 51,000 a year from her work, explained how “mysterious trucks” show up with unexpected shipments while she is alone, calling up to 600 customers a day.
She also denied the company’s expectations. “They don’t give us a budget to work like Walmart or Publix, so we’re essentially slave-driven,” she said.
She began using the hashtag #PutInATicket, mocking the company’s bureaucratic response to workers’ complaints and inspiring employees to publish their own videos of the conditions in some of the chain’s 17,000 stores.
Four days later, after garnering hundreds of thousands of views of her confessional videos, Gundel was fired when she returned to work at 6 a.m.
Since 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed $ 3.3 million in fines against the retailer for violations, including “unsafe conditions” and “exposing workers to injury.” In 2019, the Attorney General of New York fined the general dollar and other discount chains $ 1.2 million for the sale of expired drugs and obsolete motor oil.
Dollar general manager Mary Gundel, 33, was fired after posting a series of videos on TikTok exposing working conditions at a discount retailer
Gundel was inspired to see another video criticizing the sloppy appearance in one place. She attributes the clutter to constant shipments and layoffs that leave her working 60 hours a week of manual labor without overtime.
Gundel ran a store in Tampa, Florida, until she was fired on April 1. She made $ 51,000 a year for the hard hours, many of which she spent alone. Above, a store in Taylorsville, Kentucky
The Tennessee-based Dollar General had revenue of $ 34.2 billion in the fiscal year ending January 2022. Its share listing is part of the S&P 500, a stock market index commonly used to measure the health of the U.S. economy.
The company is accused of renting or buying tons of space in rural communities and creating “food deserts” where discount stores are the only option for groceries nearby, according to Business Insider.
In her TikToks, Mary Gundel stressed that she enjoyed aspects of her work while criticizing senior management.
“It simply came to our notice then. “I could get in a lot of trouble and even be fired,” she said.
Gundel started working for the chain in Georgia three years ago. She has three children, one autistic, with her husband, a defense entrepreneur. She moved to Tampa as a manager in February 2020.
She has wavy, purple hair and often wears hoop earrings in her videos. Her long acrylic nails, which she says she uses to open boxes, also attract attention.
In January 2021, a letter was sent to Gundel congratulating her on being the best performing employee, along with a lapel pin that read “DG: Top 5%”.
She said her store had 198 distribution hours, which was recently reduced to 130, representing one fewer full-time worker and one fewer part-time worker, according to the New York Times.
Gundel, who is married and has three children, was a best-performing manager who was sent a lapel pin labeled “DG: Top 5%”
It launched the hashtag #PutInATicket, a reference to the complaint system of Dollar General’s Byzantine employees. Since then, the hashtag has been adopted by other DG officials across the country
As a result, she often ran the store alone and worked more than 60 hours a week without overtime, she said.
Her first round of videos was inspired by another video, in which she complains about the miserable condition of a Dollar General store.
“Instead of getting angry at the people who work there, trying to handle their entire workload, why not say something to the real big people in the company?” Gundel told TikTok.
“Why don’t you ask the company for more so that they can actually start financing the stores so they can do all this?”
Some of her videos were shot as she unpacked the seemingly endless shipments that clogged the aisles of the shops and the back room. She even started using a hashtag, #PutInATicket, referring to the company’s alleged process for handling or not handling complaints.
Gundel has started republishing videos of customers entering other cluttered stores across the country. She was fired days after she started making videos about her working conditions
“Do you know what they tell you?” “Put on a ticket,” she said.
She received a call from her boss on March 29, a day after she began posting her videos.
“I was not specifically told to download my videos, but I was advised to,” she said in the video. “To save my job and my future career and where I want to go.”
“I had to say respectfully,” she said. “I feel it would be against my morals and integrity to do so.”
On April 1, her boss and two other managers showed up to fire her before she opened the store.
“My boss came today with two other store managers and they will clear the back room,” she told her followers in a video that has already been viewed more than a million times.
“They were starting to clear up behind my registry.” It’s impossible to get help, but you know, when something like that happens, “Oh, yes, we have all the help in the world to come and do this.”
HIGH EXPECTATIONS: “They don’t give us the budget to work like Walmart or Publix, so we’re mostly slave-driven.”
Speaking to the Times, she said: “Everyone has their turning point. You can only feel invaluable for so long.
In a statement, Dollar General said it provided “many opportunities” for frustrated employees to be heard.
“We use this feedback to help us identify and address issues, improve our workplace, and better serve our employees, customers, and communities.
“We are disappointed every time an employee feels that we have not met these goals and we use these situations as additional opportunities for listening and learning. “Although we do not agree with all the statements that Ms. Gundel is currently making, we are doing so here,” the company said.
Since then, she has continued to push for better working conditions at Dollar General and encouraged a national release on May 2.
Her videos kicked off, with other workers turning to China’s social media app to share their disappointment with the company.
“I’m so tired I can’t even speak,” said one employee. Give me back my life.
A former keynote holder at Dollar General cites Gundel’s insolence as the reason he is now talking about the way the company is run.
– Everything is true. The reason these stores are in such poor conditions is that they don’t have hours to let employees work. They do not allow us to hire enough people to work in our store, “said a young man.
“When you work there, you do everything,” he said.
The US Department of Labor criticized Dollar General for “its long history of violations and repeated failures to protect its workers from hazards in the workplace” in a press release in December. The agency has hit the company with fines of $ 3.3 million since 2016.
“General Dollar has a long history of neglecting safety measures to prevent serious injury or death in the event of a fire or other emergency,” said Doug Parker, assistant secretary of occupational safety and health.
“This company’s troubled history of workplace safety violations must end, and OSHA will make every effort to hold them accountable for their failures.”
In 2019, New York Attorney General Leticia James fined Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar $ 1.2 million for selling expired and obsolete products.
Dollar General has agreed to pay a separate $ 1.1 million restitution for the sale of obsolete motor oil, “which was not suitable for most automobile engines manufactured after 1930,” according to James.
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