Mary Gundel received a letter from the corporate office of Dollar General in January of 2021. The company gave Ms. Gundel a pin that said "Top 5%."
The letter said to wear it proudly.
Ms. Gundel put the pin on her uniform to make sure the world saw it.
Ms. Gundel loved her job at Dollar General. It was fast-paced and unpredictable. She liked the challenge of chasing shoplifters and calming down customers. She earned more than the median income in the city.
Delivery trucks would show up without warning, leaving boxes in the aisles because there weren't enough workers to unpack them. The company only allowed so many hours for other employees to work, so it took days for the store to be run by herself. Customers are complaining about out of stock items.
Ms. Gundel hit record on the morning of March 28 while she was running the register and putting tags on clothing.
The retail store manager life critique was a six-part critique in which Ms. Gundel laid bare the working conditions inside the fast-growing retail chain, with stores that are a common sight in rural areas.
As she looked into her camera, Ms. Gundel said that talking out about this was bad.
Whatever happens, happens. They are probably going to end up losing a lot of people if something isn't said.
One of her videos has been viewed over one million times.
With that, Ms. Gundel was transformed from a loyal lieutenant in Dollar General management into an outspoken dissident who risked her career to describe working conditions familiar to retail employees across the United States.
Ms. Gundel was fired by Dollar General. She was let go less than a week after posting her first critical video, but not before she inspired other Dollar General store managers to speak out on TikTok.
I am so tired I can't even talk, said a woman who did not give her name.
I've been so afraid to post this until now, I walked viewers through a Dollar General store and talked about how I was forced to work alone because of labor cuts.
She said that this will be her last day.
Dollar General provides many avenues for their teams to make their voices heard, including an open-door policy and routine engagement surveys. This feedback helps us identify and address concerns, improve our workplace, and better serve our employees, customers, and communities. When an employee feels that we have not lived up to our goals, we use those situations as additional opportunities to listen and learn.
We don't agree with all the statements being made by Ms. Gundel, but we are doing that here.
Ms. Gundel's TikTok page was a mix of posts about hair extensions and her dental surgery before March 28. A daily digest is dedicated to fomenting revolt at a major American company. She is trying to build a movement of workers who feel disrespected and who want to form a union.
Every day, Ms. Gundel announces on TikTok a woman who works for Dollar General from Arkansas, Ohio, and Tennessee. Most of the women who have been assigned to answer questions and concerns from fellow employees in those states are keeping their identities hidden because they worry about losing their jobs.
Social media gives rank-and-file workers like Ms. Gundel a platform to vent and connect with one another. Christian Smalls, an Amazon warehouse employee on Staten Island who was derided by the company as not smart or articulate, organized the first major union in Amazon history last month.
Ms. Gundel has been able to break through because other workers see themselves in her.
She said in a telephone interview that everyone has a breaking point.
Ms. Gundel was planning on working at Dollar General for a long time when she started working in Georgia. She has a husband who works for a defense contractor and three children. She grew up near Cape Canaveral. Her mother was a district manager. The Kennedy Space Center has a gift store. Ms. Gundel was the Dollar General store manager in February 2020 when the Pandemic struck.
She said that the store used to have almost 200 hours a week to allocate to staff. She only had about 130 hours to allocate by the end of last month, which equates to one full-time employee and one part-time employee less than when she started.
Ms. Gundel had to operate the store on her own for long periods of time, working up to 60 hours a week without overtime pay.
Ms. Gundel's protest was triggered by a video posted by a customer complaining about the state of a Dollar General store. Ms. Gundel heard these complaints from her own customers. There are boxes in the aisles. Why aren't the shelves full?
She understood that they were frustrated. She said that the blame on employees is not correct.
Ms. Gundel said on TikTok that instead of getting mad at the people working there, they should say something to the big people in the company.
Some of Ms. Gundel's fellow employees had already gone public about their challenges at work. Crystal McBride, who worked at a Dollar General in Utah, made a video that showed her store's dumpster overflowing with trash that people had deposited there.
Ms. McBride thanked the guys for adding more dirty work for her.
She said in an interview that Dollar General fired her and that her manager warned her about some of her videos. I wasn't afraid of losing my job because I walked out of an abusive relationship and lost my daughter to cancer.
Ms. Gundel was not. Many of the videos she posted were increasingly angry as her online following grew.
She talked about a customer who pulled a knife on her and a man who tried to pull her out of her car.
She said that the company hid serious issues in bureaucracy.
Ms. Gundel tagged other TikTok users in her own videos with the # PutInATicket.
Ms. Gundel said her boss called her on March 29 to discuss her videos. She said that he told her to review the company's social media policy. She told him that she was aware of the policy.
She said in the video that she was not specifically told to take her videos down.
She closed her eyes for a second.
She said it would be against her morals and integrity to remove the videos.
Ms. Gundel received a call from one of the senior executives who had sent her the pin. Ms. Gundel wanted to record the call to protect herself. The executive wanted to talk to Ms. Gundel, but didn't want to be recorded. The call ended quickly.
On April 1, Ms. Gundel reported to work at 6 a.m.
She said that it was sad that a store manager had to go viral on a social media site in order to get help in their store.
Ms. Gundel has been posting videos for a long time and recently started driving.
Some people say that Ms. Gundel has already had an impact. In a recent TikTok video, a woman credited Ms. Gundel with making the Dollar General in Florida look better.
As her camera panned the aisles, the woman said, "Look at the refrigerators, everything is stacked in there."
She thanked Mary for going viral and standing up to corporate and losing her job, because it wasn't done in vain. Look at it.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
