Dollar General manager calls out company in viral TikToks, gets fired
TikTok: alwaysmrsgundelA Dollar General manager has been controversially fired after getting caught calling out the company on TikTok.
For those not aware, Dollar General is an American chain of variety stores that has over 18,000 locations across the country.
They sell everything from Mother’s Day gifts to daily essentials, though not every customer has been left completely satisfied in one of the shops in Florida.
A Dollar General manager in Tampa, Florida, took to TikTok on March 28 to respond to a number of concerns about how disorganized its shelves were. Her series of videos on the state of Dollar General has accumulatively racked up millions of views on the platform, with grave consequences.
Dollar General manager fired after viral TikTok series
After three years of employment at the company, Mary Gundel has worked in five district manager positions across five stores.
In one TikTok, she shows footage of what customers are concerned about – highlighting empty shelves across the location she manages directly. Then, Gundel says it’s not because of a lack of hard work, but that managers have “gave up” and are “tired” of company decisions.
She said: “After three years of busting my a** six days a week, 50-60 hours a week dedicating my life to this job, never seeing my kids, barely making it home for dinner, to hear customers say that we’re lazy, it really got me heated…”
Then, she explained that even with over 425 customers per day, four truck deliveries a week, and $10,000 worth of sales, her store’s labor hours to staff the team have been cut from 198 to 130 hours.
Taking aim at company cuts and, in other videos, salaries, Gundel put herself in the firing line.
Dollar General releases statement on firing
Four days after the videos were discovered by her superiors, Mary was terminated by Dollar General.
After the decision to fire Gundel caught the attention of major news outlets, Dollar General released a statement to The New York Times. It reads: “We are disappointed any time an employee feels that we have not lived up to these goals and we use those situations as additional opportunities to listen and learn.”
Since then, Mary has launched a viral hashtag on TikTok: #putinaticket – which has led to a Dollar General employee strike scheduled for May 2, 2022.
In a clip, which has racked up nearly 150,000 views, the former manager explains what the “put in a ticket” campaign is all about.
What is #putinaticket on TikTok?
After being asked about the meaning of the campaign, Gundel said: “We have a system in our office [DG] that we can use on the computer, to put in tickets for vendors if we need more products or having a problem with a driver… We can put in tickets for basically anything.”
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The idea is that, by submitting tickets on a mass scale, those working in corporate will understand the severity of the business’ problems on the shop floor.
This has empowered a number of other employees to speak out about ongoings at their local Dollar General store, with other staff members announcing they had been fired as part of the #putinaticket movement.
It is unclear as to how many staff have been removed from their positions since the viral trend of submitting tickets first started in March.
With strikes scheduled throughout May and mainstream news media across the United States picking up on the story, employees and customers alike will be expecting more updates from Dollar General in due course.
