The raging Sleepy Hollow wildfire in Central Washington flared up in the city of Wenatchee last night near a Sonic Drive-In fast food outlet, where smoke burned the eyes and lungs of workers on duty. With workers safety & health at risk, the manager on duty attempted to get the Director of Operations to give the ok for the restaurant to shut down early for the night in order to keep everyone safe.
The supervisor refused, and reportedly even threatened to fire anyone who left early.
Faced with the choice between risking his job and risking his life, the employee quit — and let everyone know what happened.
(In case you’re curious — Sonic has 3,500 outlets across the country and took in more than a half-billion dollars last year.)
Postscript
The Wenatchee Sonic responded on their own Facebook page, proudly announcing that every scheduled worker showed up the next morning.
Less than a half-hour later, the restaurant was closed again, due to a nearby ammonia leak.
About an hour after that, they shut down their Facebook page.
Oh, and as of yesterday afternoon — they're hiring.
And thanks to Twitter, it's now confirmed that this new manager job is a very recent development:
Update (6/30/2015, 9:24 am):
Sounds like the timing of the job posting here is a little bit in dispute: we just received an email tip saying that the job had actually been posted prior to the fire. Either way, there's no reason any of this should have ever happened.