A North Carolina Chick-fil-A restaurant recently attempted to lure drive-thru volunteers with free food instead of actual pay.
A restaurant’s unique plan to recruit drive-thru volunteers to serve customers lasted about a day. The backlash a Hendersonville, North Carolina, Chick-fil-A location received shut it down quickly.
Insider reported a July 26 post which read:
We are looking for volunteers for our new Drive Thru Express! Earn 5 free entrees per shift (1 hr) worked. Message us for details.
A screen grab of the post, which Insider said vanished by the following afternoon, appeared to receive nearly 250 comments.
The comments, apparently, were not kind. Then again, who on Facebook is ever kind these days?
Insider notes that it’s not unusual for restaurants to offer free food as a benefit to its workers in addition to pay. It even lists a few examples. I never considered trying to land a job when I was in school with my favorite restaurant, Zesto, because I feared I might eat their profits!
It is unusual, however, for restaurants to offer food instead of pay.
Still, restaurants are still dealing with the challenge of finding people who want to work and who’ll actually show up. We live in an economy in which there might be some people who might actually need the food, sad as that is.
Chick-fil-A, more often than any other restaurant I ever visit, manages to staff people who actually seem to appreciate the fact that a customer arrives. Their courteousness and enthusiasm to create as positive an experience as possible goes a long way.
I still wonder why more restaurants don’t seem capable of that anymore.
As for the drive-thru volunteers idea, hey, if you think it’s such a terrible idea, here’s a hint: Don’t volunteer.
A Chick-fil-A super fan — and I’ve known a few — might be tempted. The worst that can happen is there are no takers.
And I can’t help but mention a USA Today article that points out that this same restaurant raised its minimum wage for full-timers last year to $19 per hour. Clearly, this is a restaurant who isn’t against paying.
But as is often the case on social media, no good deed goes unpunished.
The reason why it probably lasted only a couple of days was that it violated federal labor laws.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp